Let me firstly apologise to all those who have been eagerly reading the posts from our US trip. We had very intermittent access to the web during the second half of the trip, meaning that it became difficult to both write and post entries on a daily basis. However be assured that pictures were taken and words were written.

Therefore this entry acts as place marker, a proverbial stake in the ground. All of the posts from our US trip yet to be updated will be backdated to the correct date below this entry, while all new posts will be chronologically listed above as per usual.

The more alert weblog readers would note that we actually arrived back in Melbourne last Saturday, a bit over a week ago. Usually I can offer up a plausible reason for not posting for so long, but this time I really have a cracker of an excuse…

On arriving back in Melbourne on Saturday morning I went straight to bed. I figured the thirty straight hours in airplanes and airports had just worn me out. But by Saturday night I was presenting a vicious fever coupled with severe muscular pain. By Sunday night I was in hospital. Yeah, that surprised me too.

It was a six hour wait in the emergency ward waiting room before I got admitted. Apparently the triage nurse didn’t think I was all that sick. But thankfully my ridiculously high 39.2 degree temperature finally got them thinking something was wrong.

The diagnosis wandered between pancreatitis, meningitis (both bacterial and viral), Lymes disease and a stuffed gall bladder, before one of the doctors declared it just your basic run-of-the-mill appendicitis. By Monday morning my pink, and not to mention healthy, appendix had been removed leaving the doctors just a little bit panicky. Thankfully they hadn’t seen it fit to remove one of the organs I actually might have wanted to keep.

That led to a battery of tests including blood, arterial gases, swabs, brain CT and urine. Oh, and a little procedure called a lumbar puncture. Yes it’s as painful as it sounds. It involves them sticking a four inch needle in your spine to extract all those tasty brain and spinal fluids. And boy do they monitor you closely after doing that procedure… something about them not wanting you to stain their sheets with leaking brain and spinal fluids.

Anyways, to cut a rather gruesome story short, I got of hospital on Friday still not knowing what’s wrong with me. They told me it’s probably one of those viruses, but apparently not a killer one because I’m still alive. My dad (who’s also a doctor) tells me that’s what they tell you when they don’t know what’s wrong with you.

So for the past few days I’ve been couped up at home recovering from both my unnecessary appendectomy, and my mystery not-so-killer-but-almost virus. It means that I haven’t unfortunately had the time to respond to everyone’s e-mails yet, but I promise to get around to it in the next few days as my strength builds up.

Doing anything at the moment seems to make me tired, from just eating dinner, to having a shower, or simply writing this post. So I’m off to have a nap now.

But finally before I go… a big heartfelt thank you to my family and friends who have expressed their best wishes in the past week. It’s definitely meant a lot.