Family News

About Rob's brother-in-law.

We went up to Rob's sister's house over the weekend to visit and because it's M's 4th birthday tomorrow (M is Miciah's cousin) and they threw her a b-day party. They only live 2 hours north, so it wasn't a bad little trip. We made arrangements to miss church (unusual for us to do), and were planning on being home tonight.

When we got in Friday night we learned that D, C's husband, was in the hospital. This is a fairly common occurance for D and he's had a lot of health problems in the past. So we didn't think a lot of it. They said he had pancreatitis (or however you spell it) which basically means that the pancreas starts digesting itself. Ew. But it usually goes away on its own. They kept D in the hospital on no food and were just monitoring him to make sure the recovery went well. Well, Saturday he took a turn for the worse and things were not going well. His heart rate went up to a steady 150, so they took him up to the ICU where they took some blood work and found out his body was all out of whack. His temperature, for starters, was all funky. He thought it was burning up in the room, but his temperature was really low. His blood sugar was 680. He is diabetic, but 680 is INSANELY high. And his potassium, which regulates the heart, apparently, level was 6.8 and 5 is high. So they decided to life flight him to OSU Hospital in Columbus, an almost 2 hour drive, but a 20 minute chopper flight. On the way they diverted him to Lima, another small hospital. It didn't make much sense to us why they had diverted him there until they found out when they arrived that he had gone into cardiac arrest and had died on the flight.

So, a little weird. From feeling a little sick on Friday afternoon to not living on Saturday night. Funny how life can go like that.

Everyone is doing well, or as well as can be expected. C is now a widow with 4 children from 11 years old to not even 2 years old. It's a sad situation, but she has a lot of support. And she now has a lot of major decisions to make about her future.

Anyway, that's the scoop. We'll be up in Minster, OH (where Rob's other sister, M, lives, about 15 minutes from C's house) until Wednesday, at least, when the funeral is. We would like to be back on schedule on Thursday, but it's possible that won't happen. C and kids and parents fly out to Utah on Thursday for a memorial service and D will be buried in SLC.

... For about 2 months now I've had a premonition that someone was going to die. I don't know if this is the someone I had a premonition about, but for 2 months I've been preparing for a death. I didn't know whose death, so I was just trying to get to a place where any death would be okay. So I feel strangely prepared for this, and that's been a huge blessing. Rob has gone through a round or two of beating himself up about this or that because he was at the hospital with C and gave D a blessing and prayed for him before D left on the flight. But overall there is a feeling of peace about the whole situation, and that's been a good feeling to have.

Hope you all are well and I'll e-mail again on Thursday or Friday. We love you all!

Tamra