Wings International Hospital

Well after a hell of a night Bella was no better this morning, and after having nurses in and out of her room all night, giving her medication when they could, we called for the Doctor to come and check her out again. He seemed genuinely concerned and ordered an urgent CT scan, so Bella and I were put in an ambulance and sent over to the Emergency section of the hospital, which was an experience in itself. Poor little Bella was terrified of the machine and in such a lot of pain, I had to wait outside while they did the scan, then we were packed back into the ambulance and up to the room.

Sometime later (can't remember times) but the doctor came back and had the scans with him, what I will never forget is when he held them up to the light and all you could see was a big mass on Bella's brain, crazy scary thoughts were running around my head and I'm sure at the time they were with Andrew as well. This is when he told us that Bella had what looked like a large bleed on the brain, I for the life of my can't remember many details here, as it was a lot to take in, all I can remember thinking is that we had to go home, we had to get our girl back to PMH and to the safety of Perth and our families.

We called the Australian embassy but being a Saturday they were closed but we got put through to Canberra and they helped us to with what to do and to get onto our insurers and onto international SOS who would arrange everything for us.

I was sent by Andrew back to the hotel, to pick up our passports and documents and to pack our bags, I met Amanda back at the hotel and promptly fell apart, but she helped me and comforted me and packed our bags for us.

I then headed back to the hospital and while I was away the International SOS doctor had been and made an assessment of Bella and together with the team back in Perth it was decided that Bella should be sent home on a Careflight.

Andrew rang both our families and let them know what was going on and that we would be at PMH in the early hours of the morning.

Arrangements were made with the help of Qantas to get Andrew home on a Jetstar flight which meant he had to leave the hospital around 6pm, Bella was still in agony and having him leave was so very hard on all of us.

The Careflight team arrived around 11.30pm and I immediately felt so relieved, Dr Joe and the nurse were both from Joondalup Hospital which is our local. Poor Bella had been in agony all day, with minimal pain killers and only the comfort of Andrew and I laying with her and patting her on the back and helping her to breathe through her pain, I really don't know how she did it.

Bella was immediately given a drip and pain killers and promptly knocked out, it was such a relief to see her peaceful again and not writhing in absolute agony.

Someone came up to the room and took our passports and a short time later we were back down to the ambulance and on our way to the airport, we were met at the plane by customs and then we were on our way home again, I was so scared that something would go wrong on the plane, but everything was okay it was a very smooth flight and Bella was out for the duration thankfully, a couple of times she moved around a bit but Dr Joe was there and sorted her out quick smart.

I even managed to sleep a little on the plane and before I knew it we had arrived back in Perth and were met by customs and the ambulance at the airport.