Peg Kerr's Journal

I've occasionally mentioned Marc Gunn (marcgunn) of the Irish and Celtic Music podcast on this blog. Marc's a tireless promoter of Celtic music and other musicians and an extremely nice guy to boot (he's the guy who recorded my filk 'My Father Was a Werewolf').

His daughter was born on October 27, but she's going to require heart surgery. From his Facebook post:

I told everyone on my podcasts that I would let them know when my daughter was born. So here's the latest.

On October 27th, 2010 at 12:02 pm, my daughter Heather Kenzie Gunn came into this world. She weighed 7 lbs 6 ozs and was 19.5 inches long. She's beautiful and it was absolutely magical to hold her in my arms for the first time. [note: see a picture of Heather at that link to the Facebook post up above. She IS really beautiful.]

She looked absolutely perfect when they took her into the nursery to check her APGAR scores. However, they noticed her blood oxygen levels were lower than they should be. The doctors did an echocardiograph and found that Kenzie has heart defect. She was transported to the NICU at the Children's Hospital for better care.

It turns out she has variation of Tetralogy of Fallot with Pulmonary Atresia. I'm not good at explaining the specifics, but from what I understand, Kenzie's version is a best case scenario. However, she will still require several surgeries. The first one is this Friday.

In the meantime, my wife and I are spending several hours a day visiting our daughter, holding her, loving her, feeding her, and being the best parents we can be without having her at home, in our arms.

We thank you for all your kindness and concern. And if you get a chance, please do us a wee favor and keep Kenzie in your thoughts and prayers. Thank you.

Slainte!

Marc Gunn

( Oh, hey, I found a video of him performing 'My Father Was a Werewolf' )

I was going to do my Portus report tonight, but I'm feeling pretty yucky (digestive upset) and so am going to bed, but I just wanted to mention . . .

Remember the wizard rock song I wrote? I'd mentioned that marcgunn did a recording of it. I just learned that he's going to be releasing it on a CD next month.

And even better yet--I screwed up my courage and talked to the guys with Ministry of Magic about it. I got Jason to listen to it on my iPod--and he really likes it! And they said that they'd like to record it too and include it on a charity compilation CD. They're going to see about having Alex Carpenter of The Remus Lupins and Grant of The Weasel King collaborate with them on it, too. I had Alex listen to the song, since he was also there at Portus, and he liked it, too, and said he'd be willing to collaborate, and The Weasel King previously told me the same thing. Ministry of Magic told me via email today that they'll start working on new music later this summer, including this song, and they'll be in touch.

Woot! Ministry of Magic is going to record my song!