I pushed the post on the Microlite78 giveaway items for the Would you like to see a Microlite78 RRCF donation drive on Sunday afternoon before my Sunday game. I had no idea when I did so that things were about to go to hell for a few days.

About 5:30pm with about 90 minutes left to go in the game, my wife got a phone call from a nurse’s aide at a hospital in Dallas say that her mom wanted to talk to her. It turns out that her mom had been taken to the hospital from Macy’s on Thursday last week and had been admitted — and had not bothered call my wife (her next of kin) or her friend in Dallas (her emergency contact) or anyone else. If Donna’s mom (who is in her early 80s) had not started feeling better and wondered why she wasn’t getting any phone calls from her daughter or her friends, we might have never found out. Needless to say, our game ended for the week right then.

When my wife talked to the nurses after their shift change, she discovered that the hospital had all her medical info and records — including next-of-kin and local emergency person contact info, but no one had bothered to use it in the 4 days she had been there. Needless to say she was not a happy camper. She (with some help from me) contacted the rest of her mom’s friends and family and perpared to complain to the hospital Monday morning. We’ve spend Monday and Tuesday trying to get someone to admit that they screwed up but the best we can get is “protocols should have been followed” — well, yes, but they weren’t. They’ve also managed to lose her partial plate (which was removed in the ER and apparently mislaid. Fortunately, she is now out of the hospital and in a rehab facility. Hopefully, our life will soon be back to somewhat normal.

Things like this are particularly hard on my wife because she can’t just go up to Dallas and handle things in person. The two hour drive would basically incapacitate her for several days (major back issues). A 15 minute drive around town is hard enough on her.

While all this has been going on, I’ve been getting a lot of support for Microlite81 both in donations (we may hit $300 in time for doing the drawing at next Sunday’s game) and in emails from people saying they are interested even though they can’t donate. I’m a bit surprised by the very high level of interest. I did not expect almost as much interest as there was in the early drafts of Microlite74 years ago. I have managed to put a very early (0.01) draft together. While it is available in the donor download area with the usual donor password, there is really no need to download it. At the moment it is just the 1E spells and Monsters from the M74 companions, treasure from M74 companion, rules mainly from M74 Extended, character creation from M81 Extended with the slight start on the 1E mods to character generation. I tossed this together in spare moments over the last couple of days. I’ll work more on it once we hit about $400 in donations.