We arrived late at night in Sydney and all we cared about was getting to our accommodation at the Harbourside Serviced Apartments. The apartment was fully equipped and had a fantastic view - but that's almost all we would end up seeing of Sydney.

While I slowly recovered over the next day or so, Dave worsened. We visited a doctor from the Victoria Avenue Medical Clinic the following day. She advised us that we should keep up our fluid intake and send a stool sample to the lab. By the next morning Dave was really really ill. We went to the emergency department of the Royal North Shore Hospital - where all the doctors and nurses seemed to be from the UK. They sent us home with a letter to Dave's GP that reported:

This gentleman presented to ED with 4/7 D&V, after being on a cruise where most of the other passengers had similar symptoms. He was hypotensive and tachycardic which settled with IV rehydration... He was discharged home when he was able to tolerate oral fluids.

I had planned to meet up with an old Australian boyfriend of mine (Brenden) in Sydney. That evening, since Dave was feeling better, I went out for dinner and a tour of the harbour with Brenden. When I returned home, Dave was in a complete state and had started vomiting fresh blood (as opposed to the blood grains he had been vomiting before). We hopped into a cab and rushed back to the hospital. They took him in and again gave him IV fluids, painkillers and anti-nausea drugs. We spent the night in the hospital emergency department. Dave was extremely ill and there was no way we could fly home - but we were supposed to leave in a day.

According to Air Canada, we couldn't change our aeroplan tickets. I was frantic - there was no way we could get home - and unless Dave needed to be evacuated our health insurance didn't cover the cost of a new plane ticket. I called my mom. My mom is the best! She called up the office of the VP of Customer Relations and let them know that other passengers would be very uncomfortable flying with a man who had no control over his bowels! They saw the light and agreed to let us postpone our trip home until Monday.

We called the hospital and got a doctor to verbally give us the lab results from the stool sample. It turns out that we had had salmonella poisoning.

I did some frantic souvenir shopping, ventured out to the chemist and to get some food and also to see Brenden once again. Although I wasn't feeling 100% better, I was doing much better than Dave, who still couldn't eat any food and had a fever. He was getting a little better, being able to keep down fluids and resupply his fluid intake at a rate that didn't leave him severely dehydrated. By Monday he was well enough to take some imodium and finally get home.

We left for the Sydney airport before dawn. After managing to get seats close to the toilets we did our airport shopping and waited at the gate to get on the plane. But it wasn't to be. They came over the loudspeaker and said that there was a cruicial part of the plane that was broken and our flight would be delayed for at least 24 hours. We were bussed out to a hotel, which looked like it was trying to be 4 star, but actually was a bit of a dump. The couch in our room had grafitti on it, the wallpaper was peeling and parts of the ceiling were falling down. We were given vouchers to eat at the buffet. Dave and I spent our extra day sleeping. We finally left Australia the following day and took the 27 hour trip home.

It was good to be home.