My Best Friend

Two weeks ago, my very best friend slipped into a coma and we don't know why... I'm sitting next to Ryan, in a hospital in Bountiful, Utah, praying with all of my heart that he will be able to recover from this ordeal. I know that God is a God of miracles, but I also trust in His timing of things. This trial has many purposes, so I won't wish it away.

A lot of people have commented on my strength, but I want to point out that I am not strong. I am weak, and my heart is broken, and not knowing what will happen even an hour from now scares me. But I have worked for years on building a relationship with my Savior so that I can turn to Him in all things. His strength sustains me, His love will heal my broken heart, and He will guide me to where I need to be.

A good friend of mine shared this quote with me this morning:

• Whatever change in life's circumstances may come our way, and whatever unexpected path we may have to travel, how we respond is a choice. Turning to the Savior and grasping His outstretched arm is always our best option. Elder Richard G. Scott taught this eternal truth: "True enduring happiness with the accompanying strength, courage, and capacity to overcome the most challenging difficulties comes from a life centered in Jesus Christ. ... There is no guarantee of overnight results, but there is absolute assurance that, in the Lord's time, solutions will come, peace will prevail, and emptiness will be filled."  (www.churchofjesuschrist.org Turn to the Lord, October 2017 General Conference, Bishop W. Christopher Waddell.)

I encourage each person reading this to work on developing their own personal relationship with Jesus Christ. He truly is the Savior of the world, and nothing can compare in value to having a loving and trusting relationship with Him.

Here's what we know about what happened to Ryan:

On Tuesday, June 25th, Ryan dropped Nicole and I off at our church so we could go to girls camp. We had taken Becca and our dogs to my parents' house the day before. Ryan would be home alone all week because he works swing shifts and wouldn't have the time/ability to take care of the dogs and Becca while Nicole and I were gone.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I would occasionally get enough cell phone service at camp to get a text to or from Ryan. We really don't like being away from each other, but he was happy that I had the opportunity to go to camp with Nicole.

On Thursday I had sent a few texts to Ryan, but hadn't heard back from him. By that evening, I was getting anxious, but figured I just wasn't getting enough cell service to receive any texts. I was sitting by the campfire, hoping and praying for cell service, when suddenly I received a text from Ryan's co-worker, Kristie, asking why Ryan hadn't shown up for work. That's not like Ryan at all...he's always on time, and it was almost 4 hours past the time his shift should have started.

To make a long story short, wonderful people worked together and prayers began immediately. Ryan was found in our living room at home, unresponsive, but still breathing. Based on the way he was dressed and his cell phone not being charged, we could tell that he had come home from work around 3am on Thursday, gone through his nightly routine, and was reading in the recliner when something happened to cause his blood pressure to drop significantly. We still don't know what that something was, but his continued low blood pressure caused a massive stroke which affected his entire brain. He had been sitting there for at least 15 hours before he was found and taken to the hospital.

At the hospital, he had a seizure, and he was found to be in kidney and liver failure. They life-flighted him to a bigger hospital, where they were planning on putting him on dialysis, but then his kidneys began functioning and recovering on their own, so they didn't have to do dialysis.

He has been in a coma this entire time (two weeks now), so all we can really do is take care of him and wait for him to wake up. On Monday, July 8th, he was transferred to a long-term acute care hospital in Utah. We have witnessed small improvements in his condition (like him breathing on his own, and gaining back some reflexes that he didn't show at first), and we feel like sometimes we can see "him" there in his eyes. In a coma, sometimes people go through periods of time with their eyes open, and Ryan does that daily. It's almost like he's awake, but he can't respond to verbal requests like "Squeeze my hand," or "Blink your eyes twice."

That's the basics for now. I'll try to post more as time permits. I know Ryan's mom has been working on writing a more-detailed explanation of what has happened, and I will share that here when she has it ready.