some help to cover the expenses of staying in Bali<\/a> so that they can just focus on Ashen without the added stress of this financial burden.\u201d<\/p>\nDoctors told the family that Ashen had bacterial meningitis caused by undercooked pork. He then developed pneumonia and an upper gastrointestinal tract bleed from a stomach ulcer.<\/p>\n
![\"Ashen]()
Ashen is in emergency care after contracting bacterial meningitis, believed to have been caused by consuming undercooked pork. <\/p>\n
His brain swelling at the time was severe.<\/p>\n
Ashen was able to be woken from his coma eventually, which Lyons said was \u201cincredible\u201d.<\/p>\n
After two weeks in hospital, his medical team approved him to leave for a few days.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe continues to have side effects from the meningitis, but is mobilising well and is very determined to get his strength back,\u201d Lyons said at the time.<\/p>\n
His parents were also able to give him a \u201cproper hug\u201d for the first time that day since he had become unwell.<\/p>\n
Finally, three weeks on from catching the life-threatening illness, Ashen was able to fly home.<\/p>\n
\u201cAshen is still very very fatigued, and is dealing with a few issues as a result of the coma,\u201d Lyons told the Herald.<\/p>\n
The family are waiting for a neurology appointment and Sheena, a nurse, was managing his medications and \u201cmonitoring him closely\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re so happy to be back on home soil, but obviously it\u2019s all been very traumatic and they\u2019re hopeful that Ashen will get some energy back soon,\u201d Lyons said. <\/p>\n
The Givealittle page has so far raised $22,000, some of which will go towards ongoing care for Ashen at home.<\/p>\n
Melissa Nightingale<\/a> is a Wellington-based reporter who covers crime, justice and news in the capital. She joined the Herald in 2016 and has worked as a journalist for 12 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lyons described it as a \u201ctrip of a lifetime\u201d which turned into \u201cevery parent\u2019s worst nightmare\u201d. She said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[74,247623,21211,31272,13633,9525,94411,8615,2837,156,32255,9872,1345,78,296,6453,33555,117,111,139,69,29462,5163,4054,1315,1299,80],"class_list":["post-526515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-after","tag-ashen","tag-bacterial","tag-bali","tag-catching","tag-caught","tag-coma","tag-come","tag-during","tag-entertainment","tag-familys","tag-finally","tag-home","tag-in","tag-into","tag-lifetime","tag-meningitis","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-porirua","tag-teen","tag-teenager","tag-trip","tag-who","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}