Busy Week

This week started off with not much to do and then got busier and busier. We were heading in to watch a play at Claire’s, our oldest granddaughters, school on Monday but that was a wrong date and it appeared grandparents weren’t invited till Wednesday or Thursday so Brenda, Mom, Matt and I headed for Tony Roma’s for a consolation lunch.

Tuesday was the day we decided to move our motorhome out of its winter storage as we were planning on using it this weekend to attend the Mane Event, a horse extravaganza held annually in Red Deer, Alberta just to the north of us. We got it out and mostly loaded but life was about to intervene in those plans.

At 4:18AM Wednesday morning the phone rang and it was our youngest daughter calling to tell us that she was in labour and although it was 5 or so weeks early the baby had decided that it was time to make an appearance. Needless to say grandma was bouncing off the walls and pretty quickly was headed to Rocky Mountain House. Most of the day was spent visiting with Lacey and Clayton and our other daughter Rebecca and about 3:00PM all of Lacey’s hard work resulted in a beautiful baby girl Alle Marie Anderson.

She was 4 lbs. 14 oz. and perfect in every way. Like most preemies she was having a little trouble with the breathing part of this bright new world. Rocky Mountain House has a great staff there both doctors and nurses but it is a small town hospital and they decided that they weren’t equipped to deal with a premature baby so they chose to transfer her to a hospital in Edmonton that had a Neo-Natal Intensive Care ward that would be able to handle her issues a lot better. Now although Mom was transferred to Edmonton with a conventional ambulance.

That old fashioned method of transportation was no where fancy enough for my newest granddaughter, she chose to go first class.

This STARShip came fully staffed with a couple of pilots, one of whom I have known for a long time, Mike McNeil, a paramedic, Jason, as well as a paediatric nurse and a respiratory therapist from the Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton. As well as the staff they brought along

“Stork 1” an incubator specifically adapted to fly these types of medevac's. If you look closely you can see our little Alle Kitten riding comfortably along as she begins her journey. And rest assured that Grandpa had a word with pilot Mike to make sure he knew what valuable cargo he was flying today.

Once Lacey and Alle were on their way we headed back for Dogpound North to wait for news, and each day it has been a little better.

Friday Grandma ran up to Rocky Mountain House to bring Miss Ella and her dog Leo back here to the farm to spend the weekend with us.

Just to keep up the theme of things around here it seemed that Meg somehow hurt her back also. We found her lying on the sidewalk in front of the house stretched out and in terrible pain. After loading her on a sheet of plywood we put her in the Jeep and headed off to the Vet in Didsbury’s place, a forty minute drive. To tell the truth I didn’t think this was going to end well as each and every bump on the road seemed to cause her excruciating agony. Once we got there and got the pain controlled we took some X-rays. They showed that there was a herniated disk in her back and the vet figured if he could get some steriods into her he might be able to get her back on her feet, but he said the next 12 hours would tell the story.

By the time we called in in the morning she had been up walking and although still pretty doped looked like she would make a full recovery. It won’t be easy as they tell us she will have to be kept in a kennel and only taken out for short walks on her leash. Those who know Meg know that is not going to be fun for her, she is pretty active to say the least.

This morning, Sunday, we headed for Edmonton to deliver Ella to her family so she could meet her new sister. It is all quite surreal to her I think but she did tell me after she met Alle that “the baby came out”. I think it will all become more real to her once Alle Kitten comes home with her. But she sure was happy to see her Mom and Dad when we got up to the hospital.

So I’ll leave this off for now but I will let y’all know when Alle and her Mom head home from the Royal Alex in Edmonton.

As for the motorhome that we brought out to use this weekend well it never moved and tomorrow we will put it back in the shed till it’s next journey.