LammasFest 2008 - Part One

Done for another year. This was year six, and it was both exhausting and exhilarating.

Of course LammasFest officially began for me on Wednesday night when the hospital called and said that they wanted Marsha to come in and start induction proceedings since baby was a week overdue. So, they dutifully went in about 2130...whereupon the hospital told them to get some rest. They were not amused, for they'd previously been scheduled to come in at 0800 on Thursday whereupon induction would begin. Marsha was so uncomfortable and wanted to sleep in her own bed and to find out that she had to sleep in the hospital bed when nothing would be happening was just plain stupid.

Of course, I was at home pacing the floor, worrying. I had to work on Thursday morning, so first thing I went over to Labor and Delivery and inquired if everything was okay.

The personnel in LDR are not known for their friendliness, which boggles my mind considering they're in this place where in a whole lot of cases there is happiness and joy. You'd think that would wear off on 'em, wouldn't you?

But the unit clerk was annoyed that I asked. I was interrupting her break you see, and she was busily snarfing down her food and asking a question was inexcusable in her mind. She finally snarled at me that they were sleeping, and she was breaking the rules by telling me that.

Excuse me? I'm on the list, remember? I'm the mother of one of those folks you have sleeping in the room. I wasn't asking for medical information, simply how things were going. A simple, "Everything is okay, they're resting," would have been sufficient.

So, I proceeded with my work, and waited till about 0830 to give Kirk a call to inquire if he'd like to go to break with me. He and Marsha had just finished eating breakfast so invited me to come over to the room for a bit. (I say over as LDR is right next door to NICU. I'm over in LDR quite often in my job.)

So, I heard the saga of the lack of induction, how the doctor decided that Marsha was not to eat anything till whenever they got around to inducing her, which would be sometime in the next 24 hours...

Marsha's midwife was pissed and rescinded the doctor order, telling him that her patient wasn't going to starve because he couldn't get his lazy ass around the night before to start the induction.

Anyhow, Kirk agreed to give me updates every 2 hours and I'd relay news to everyone else. When my workday was done, I tried to stop by again, and the day unit clerk reamed me a new one for checking by; "These people have stated they want NO VISITORS and you are not allowed to ask us anything!"

Well...I was crushed beyond all manner of hurt. I didn't expect to be in the delivery room, but I did expect to be shown a bit of courtesy from my son and his wife, not to mention the hospital staff. I wasn't surprised by the unit clerk, though...I'll tell you about her at the end of this post.

So, with tears threatening to spill over, I headed out the door and to the bus. Once I got to my vehicle, I drove to the store to give Robert an update, and let him know that I was going to grab my tent and head to the campgrounds to get it set up and out of the way. Said I probably wouldn't sleep there on Thursday night, but I wanted to get my campsite ready since we didn't know what or when baby would arrive.

While I was still on the bus, though, Kirk called me. He apolgized for forgetting to call me at noon, and told me he was not even at the hospital; he was out collecting the raffle gifts for LammasFest, and the midwife had told him if he was going to be out of the hospital, then was a good time to be gone. So, he and I got the misunderstanding straightened out, and he told me he'd be out at the campsite later in the evening, about 1900, unless baby was trying to arrive.

I made it out to the campground, picked my site, and began to put up my big tent. That sucker is cantankerous and decided to give me all sorts of grief. And of course the rangers kept stopping by and wanting to talk to me about the event. And, I'd get one pole situated and it would fall over when I got the next one aligned. Or, I'd get them both in the holders and one end would fly out. So, I had to put my brain back in gear and decide how best to get the sucker up. In the meantime, Devin arrived and got his campsite up and going, then helped me get the rainfly on my tent. Eventually, I headed home to get some firewood for Devin, as the event firewood wouldn't be there until Friday.

Somewhere in there, Kirk called me and asked me if I had been to the hospital and had left.

"No, I'm standing in the middle of the campground putting up my tent," I said. "Why?"

"Because one of the nurses just came in and said that someone was waiting outside and she was told it was one of the grandma's."

I told him that I'd been abused by my coworkers enough for one day and would not be setting foot near the place ever again until they had the baby. So, Kirk knew that I'd really been treated badly. But, he wondered where the nurse had gotten the information that a grandma was there, and we decided that maybe there was a mixup and the grandma said the wrong room number.

But, the mystery was cleared up a little bit later. About two hours later, Marsha's mother called her, just getting ready to drive down the ramp to the interstate and head home. She had left her job at noon to drive over an hour to come visit her daughter before baby arrived. She'd gotten to the hospital, was snarled at by the same staff, and was sent to sit in the NICU waiting room...and promptly forgotten.

She sat for almost two hours, then decided that she'd leave. She called Marsha up, crying because she was hurt, too.

"If you didn't want me to come see you, you should have said so. You didn't have to make me drive up there, then ignore me and pretend I didn't exist."

Marsha was, of course, astounded. And Kirk was out at the nurses station chewing ass and taking names. They, of course, tried to convince Kirk that he was wrong, that they were only following his orders, but he straightened them out, and informed them from now on they'd BETTER get it right. Kirk and Marsha didn't want people just barging into their room, but wanted a nurse to come tell them they had a visitor and let Kirk come get the visitor and bring them back

So simple. But apparently beyond the reach of the LDR unit clerks.

In the meantime I'd gone home to get some more stuff packed to take out to the campground, not to mention firewood. Robert was fixing dinner, so I told him I'd be back as soon as I delivered the wood. (I only live about four miles from the campsite.)

I always get a feel for how the event will go depending on the wildlife. On my first trip, I got a picture of this beauty standing right outside the gate to the campground.





Not bad for shooting one handed in a moving vehicle, huh?

Anyway, on the way back, I also saw triplet fawns playing and chasing around in a clearing. It was so cute! I wished I'd had the video camera with me.

Anyway, after dinner Robert and I came back to the campground, and Brandi, her SO, and Kirk were all there. They'd moved the picnic tables together for our harvest feast, and had gotten some other things done. Robert walked the dogs while I unloaded things. I sat with Devin at the his fire till sometime after ten, then headed home to crash for the night. I had too much to do at home to get ready yet.

I'll tell you more about LammasFest in Part Two.

Oh...that unit clerk I said I'd tell you about? She's a very lucky woman. I've been polite enough to not say anything about her at work. You see, when I was working for HyVee, she also worked there as a cashier. In fact, she usually took over my register at the end of the my shift. She was/is so money hungry that she worked two full time jobs; one at the hospital, one at HyVee.

She got fired from HyVee because she used to take the tickets that were given to the customers for their soda bottle refunds, give them the money and then wait till later to actually cash in the receipts through the register. She stole about $6K from the store that way. My oldest daughter was the one who discovered it; she is the one who had to deal with the paperwork for bottle refunds and it never matched, so they set up a sting and caught this woman taking about $100 bucks a night from the registers.

The store was kind enough not to prosecute because she agreed to pay back the money. She had to agree to never set foot in the store again, and the assistant manager who thought of her as a second mother was the one who had to fire her. There's more to that story, but that's all I'm going to tell. She's lucky I haven't reported her thievery to the HR department at the hospital.

Anyway, that's the beginning of the LammasFest saga. I'll try to post more tonight or tomorrow.

Kate