Dear readers,
This last week has been crazy! I got off to a good start by making my flight
to L.A. by myself. It was a pretty small
plane, just two rows of seating on each side, but the flight didn’t take too
long so that was good. The next flight
was a bit miserable though; it took about 15 hours from L.A. to Sydney and I
got about 3 hours of sleep. I was
sitting just in front of one of the flight attendants areas, so there was a lot
of traffic preventing me from getting some solid sleep. I was sitting next to an Australian guy who
was returning to Sydney from being in Kentucky for 3 months visiting friends
and he seemed most excited to be returning home for the Australian beer. He kept making fun of Bud Light saying that
we were trying to make more money by watering it down so much. He was a nice guy to sit by and he didn’t
have to use the toilet (bathroom) to much, so that was nice. I was the only student from University of
Portland to be on the flight, so that was a bit strange and lonely, it would
have been nice to see a friendly face, but when I landed I was able to meet up
with the two guys from Sacred Heart University and it was great having them to
keep me company. On our connecting
flight to Perth we were running a tad late and so we had to sprint through
airport to our gate only to find that they bumped back the boarding time, so we
were actually 5 minutes early. Once we
got to Perth it was fantastic. There
were no more worries about missed flights and I was able to relax while waiting
for the other Portland students, so we could all catch the shuttle
together. The weather here is so nice,
it has been so hot, and it gets very warm early, like at 9 in the morning, so
I’m going to have to plan my running for earlier in the mornings. However, as I learned today, I won’t be able
to run for the next couple of weeks.
Disaster struck my Tuesday evening about 6 o’clock, which is about 2
a.m. on Tuesday morning for most of you, when I started to feel really queezy
and my stomach was churning a lot. At about 9 on Tuesday evening was the first
time I vomited and throughout the night, I counted 14 trips I made to the toilet,
all about 30 minutes apart. I tried
taking some tums and Pepto-Bismol, but neither did the trick and I was in pain
all night and morning. During the
morning, in the wee hours, I started noticing an isolated pain in my lower
right abdominal area, but it wasn’t too major so I kind of just ignored
it. However, as my vomiting began to
decrease, the pain became more prominent.
I attempted to sit through one of my orientation meetings that Wednesday
morning but the pain was too great. At
that point I met with my hall supervisor and residential supervisor and we
decided to go to the hospital, just in case.
After struggling to fill a urine pot (pee capsule) and vomiting in the
hospital toilet, I met with the doctor and they were pretty certain that I had
appendicitis and that I would have to have it removed, a process in Australia
called appendisectomy, not appendectomy.
They were hoping to have me in to theatre (surgery) by last night, but a
couple of emergency cases came up so I got pushed back to this morning. I feel much better now than I did last night,
and I’m really looking forward to the next several months here. The people are all so friendly and they are
making it so easy for me. I’ve had the
chance to visit a couple of beaches and I’ll be posting the pictures on
Facebook soon. I start classes this
upcoming Monday, so hopefully I’ll be recovered by then so I don’t fall
behind.
Thank you all for your support, I look forward to hearing
from you soon,
Philip
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