Run Ballarat attracts four generations

Her anesthetist and colleague Mick Shaw administered her epidural straight off the back of the 12-kilometre run. 

This year four generations of the family will take part in Run Ballarat on Sunday – Ms Idnurm, her son Judd and her mum Debbie and grandmother Noelle. 

“I was in labour last Run Ballarat, I was going to do it and I went to pick up my race pack,” Ms Idnurm, who is clerk at the day procedure ward, said. 

“I was planning on doing the 6-kilometre walk but he (Judd) had different plans. 

“This year he’s going to do it in the pram.”

Ms Idnurm watched the race from the Ballarat Base Hospital labour room. 

“I sent him (anesthetist) a text saying ‘I’m upstairs’ and he said ‘I’ll do the 12-kilometre run and I’ll be there’.

“I watched them all running, I was watching them through the labour room, all running down Sturt Street.”

Her mum, Debbie Idnurm, has been a clerk at Ballarat Base Hospital children’s ward for 17 years.

She has walked in every Run Ballarat since it began, and brought her mum, Noelle, with her.

“I think the fact that we’re the only children’s hospital around, there are always upgrades, we need more space, more isolation rooms and just more equipment to make it as comfortable as possible,” Mrs Idnurm said.

“If we can get a new refurbishment out of all this it will be much better for us so we don’t have to send the children away to Melbourne for treatment. 

“We get a lot of children as far away as Horsham, that’s a fair travel for them and if they have to then in turn head to Melbourne, that’s another couple of hours onto their trip.”

The hospital has been an important thread through her life, and her family’s. 

“I’m now a grandmother so it’s very rewarding to go through that stage where my children were little when I first started there (at the ward) and now they’re grown up and have children of their own so it’s like a circle, it goes around and around.”