Graber Christmas Letter 2018

A warm, cheerful, heartfelt and tardy ‘Merry Christmas’ from my family to yours! Also, I extend our wishes that your New Year is filled with all of the very best blessings, including finances and health and laughter. My New Years’ blessing might be tardy too, depending on which day you read this.

Heidi and I would have loved to send you a personal Christmas card, but we didn’t set aside enough time to get it done. So here is our Christmas card! You can print this photo out and hang it on your refrigerator. 

 Merry Christmas from Shawn (353 months), 

Heidi ([redacted] months), and Owen (11 months). 

 Photo credit: Lynda Halteman

Much has happened this last year in the Graber household, and I’ll try to briefly highlight some of the events of the past 12 months. I’m having a hard time concentrating, because my wife is still cackling about the thought of me describing anything “briefly”. 

On the last day of January, my wife started having contractions. We were two weeks earlier than our due date and had recently returned from a lovely “babymoon” getaway. Owen took 24 hours to arrive and was born February 1^st. 

On February 16^th, we took Owen home from the hospital. He was having difficulties breathing when he was born, so he spent his first two weeks in the NICU. We are so grateful for all the prayers, love, and money that were poured over Heidi and I during that stressful time. Owen is now chipper and lively and makes horses look sickly in comparison.

In March, I took Heidi to the hospital. She was suffering from intense abdominal pain, which turned out to be a gallstone stuck in her bile duct. The gallstone was removed, but bile had backed up into her pancreas. Gallstones are fairly common, but Heidi’s case had advanced into the very-rare-and-sometimes-fatal Necrotizing Pancreatitis. Nearly 75% of Heidi’s pancreas was dissolved. Heidi was in the hospital for two weeks, where Owen and I made frequent trips to her bedside. Doctors had hoped to stabilize Heidi enough for surgery to remove her gall bladder, but with her pancreas in such a fragile state, we were sent home instead. Heidi was placed on a feeding tube for 10 weeks with a pump that constantly fed her a liquid diet of what looked like Ensure and tasted like fiber supplements. Those months were filled with a lot of tears. Heidi felt like her bonding time with Owen was hijacked by the two hospitalization events. During Heidi’s stay in the hospital and months recovering at home, we were given donations of breast milk from several incredible mothers. We had hoped that Heidi would be able to return to breastfeeding but we still had to transition Owen to formula. On top of that, Heidi was unable to eat anything when we met with friends, hung out with family, or went to social events. Only during a fast do you realize how often people gather around food…even Bible studies often have snacks or dessert. Heidi’s feeding tube would often clog and leave her starving. Yet through all these soul-crushing trials Heidi maintained her sweet spirit.

 Heidi talking with her team of doctors

 My brother Shaylon's birthday was in April, and I helped 
him build his massive Lego Batmobile

In May we attended the Pella Tulip Festival. Heidi was still on her feeding tube and was more than ready to get out of the house. The Tulip Festival was a beautiful field trip. Owen spent the day in a stroller and thoroughly loved it. I ate some Dutch-themed fair food, which was greasy and delicious but didn’t come with a complimentary set of wooden clogs like I had hoped. 

 Windmill in Pella, IA

 I got to see my dear friend John Lamansky at his Priestly confirmation. Here John and I are with Rebecca. We three were teammates years ago in Future Problem Solving. 

In May I completed my four-year HVAC apprenticeship training 

and became a licensed Journeyman.

Our second anniversary came in June, and we spent a weekend together with Owen in a local hotel. You know those moments when you feel like you procrastinated too long on something important? Failing to book a hotel until they were all full during Memorial Day Weekend was my moment like that. Heidi and I love to travel and would have enjoyed a road trip to another state, but the accumulation of traumatic events had left us too weary to even consider a trip. 

A weekend after our anniversary, I met with several of my high school classmates for our 10-year high school reunion. It was so good to see them again. 

From left to right (classmates noted with *): Shawn* & Heidi, Onassis and Sarah* Rivera, Terry* & Samantha Miller, Harmony* Headings, Bethany* Kramer
We missed our classmates Ilene and Joanna! 

Celebrated Father's day with four generations of Graber boys: 

Grandpa Lynn, Father Barry, myself, and Son Owen

In July, we traveled to Michigan for a Maust reunion at my uncle Larry’s home. He and Aunt Cherie live on the edge of a magnificent lake and we spent five days splashing, swimming, playing games, kayaking, tubing, and eating more ice cream than I thought was humanly possible. Uncle Larry had rented an ice cream machine and furnished over 200 ice cream cones. Thanks to the diligent efforts of myself and my fellow cousins, the cones were gone in the first 36 hours and we switched over to bowls. We had a lovely time with my Grandpa Clayton Maust, who passed away shortly after the reunion. At the end of the reunion, I sensed this was the last time I’d see him alive. As I cried and thanked him for being such an amazing blessing to me, he wept and blessed me one last time. 

 

 

This photo of Grandpa Clayton and Grandma Thelma 

was taken in 2016 at my wedding

A few weeks later, we traveled back to Michigan for Grandpa’s funeral. Several of us grandsons were the pallbearers, and I shared this memory at the funeral:

-----
Back when I was a young whippersnapper, well, younger and snappier than I am now, I wasn’t sure how to go about finding a bride. Grandpa Clayton had managed to find not one but TWO beautiful soulmates, and he let me in on his secret:

“Marriage isn’t about finding someone you can live with;
It’s about finding someone you can’t live without.” 

Grandpa left an amazing example to follow; he was humble, good-natured, open, honest, and kind. I took it for granted that Grandpa loved Bernice, [and when Bernice passed away] loved Thelma. I took it for granted that he loved his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Over the years I realized how rare and precious that is; a man who loves and speaks life over his family. 

Grandpa was generous with his time, his possessions, his wisdom, his laughter. He was able to discern what was important and what wasn’t.  I watched him navigate effortlessly through hundreds of emails to find the ones he needed to read. The emails from his children and grandchildren were read, as were all emails with “THE MAUST CORNER” in the heading. He was searching for some important stock trading articles and found them. As for the rest of the emails blurring past, he didn’t seem to be bothered. The unopened, unimportant emails totaled over 13,000.

The last time I saw Grandpa Clayton was a few weeks before he passed away. I thanked him for all the ways he blessed my life; for setting a Godly foundation that I had long taken for granted. His rich bass voice that once flowed so smoothly was gone. He had to labor to speak, but he responded anyway. His last words to me were “I bless you.”

He’s now with his first love, Jesus Christ. I knew this “goodbye” was coming, but I also know that it’s temporary. How wonderful is that? 

-----

Myself and my cousins with Grandpa's casket

Also in July, Heidi and I ran up to the Iowa State Fair for an evening. We went to see Casting Crowns and Matthew West in concert. It was a hot, sticky Summer evening but there was a lovely breeze as the sun set. Heidi and I shared an extra giant corndog and strolled around the closed-for-the-night agriculture booths. We took it easy on the greasy fair food this time, since Heidi was still feeling tender in the stomach and I was feeling tender in the wallet. But the fryers were churning out all sorts of deep-fat-fried delicacies.

Oreos? Sure.
Snickers Candy bars? Yep.
Pickles? Got those too.
Sticks of butter? Deep-fat-fried and served hot before your eyes right next to the cotton candy. 

I’m not sure how the Iowa State Fair got to be such a big deal, but it’s one of the largest fairs in the U.S. In 2017, 1.1 million people passed through the gates during the 7-day event. For a state that only has 3 million residents, that’s mind-boggling. “It’s because Iowans have nothing else to do! Hyuk hyuk!” I can hear the Pennsylvanians say. Surprisingly, 2018 was my first time at the Iowa State Fair. It was lovely and I’d go again. 

In August Heidi took me flying for my birthday, which was a complete surprise. Like, I got to fly a small four-seater airplane.

 Heidi rode along and got only a tiny bit airsick. 

Heidi served a Low Country Boil for my birthday and it was tremendous. 

 

Heidi and her friend Harmony flew to North Carolina to visit some 

of Heidi's cousins this Summer. Heidi took Owen and spent a week 

out there. Shawn missed them both sorely.

On September 19^th, Heidi had her gall bladder removed. Heidi’s gall bladder had to be removed in order to prevent any additional gallstones from harming the remains of her pancreas. Before her surgery, the doctors had Heidi take a pregnancy test. This was because they didn’t want to perform surgery if there was a pregnancy. The test returned negative, and a laparoscopic [small cameras and tools fished through three tiny holes] cholecystectomy [removal of the gall bladder] was performed. The surgery went smoothly and the doctors were very pleased with the operation. 

Heidi, getting fitted with a sweet hospital gown that had 

warm air ducts in it to keep her comfy.

 Owen and I surveying the flooded yard at the trailers

 Heidi came to the rescue with coffee and donuts while we pumped water out of the shop

In September and October, Iowa experienced torrential downpour after downpour, which flooded our shop twice. Graber Heating celebrated our 80th Anniversary with an open house. We hosted over 200 friends and family only days after our shops were flooded. Many friends came to help us clean up, which we are supremely grateful for. 

If I asked you to tell me “where is the most photographed location on earth?” You might say “Eiffel Tower, Paris” or “Taj Mahal, India” or maybe “Kim Kardashian’s bathroom mirror”. These are all close, but incorrect. Evidently, it’s a location in Northern Canada, and I went to look at it with my own eyes. In October, I traveled to the northern reaches of North Alberta, North Canada to attend my dear friend Brooks’ wedding. Brooks had tried to get his fiancé Fallyn into the U.S., but the process is complex and expensive and could take several years, so he elected to move to Canada and get hitched there. I road-tripped with several of my close manfriends (Jordan Shebek, Shane Schwartz, Truman Shetler, and Stu Yoder) and we had a blast. We’re still on speaking terms with each other after more than 60 hours of road time in a single vehicle, so I count that as a win. I keep saying “North” because Fallyn lives in Peace River, AB., which is 20 hours NORTH of the U.S. Border. The scariest thing is, after all that driving, we were still only north enough to reach the bottom islands of Alaska. There is so much land that keeps going northlier and northlier… I can’t even process it. 

Speaking of the border, we crossed with a nearly-illegal amount of cheese. My friend Stu had brought along nearly 80 lbs of the stuff in giant tubes. Cheddar, Pepper Jack, and Marble. The crossing guard asked us if we had any dairy along with us. When we mentioned the truckload of cheese, she nearly croaked. 

“Are you planning to sell any of it?” she asked, while frantically short-selling all the stocks she had in Canadian Milk Farming.
“No, we’re gonna eat it or give it away to friends,” we replied.
“Normally, you’re only allowed twenty dollars of dairy per person, but I suppose I'll let you through this time” she said.
“Oh, we have under that. There’s 5 of us so that would be $100-worth of cheese. How much did you spend on this stuff, Stu?”
“Oh about 85 bucks or so,” he replied.
We were under! But the crossing guard seemed a little incredulous. 

Stu, cheese aficionado, napping during a sunrise in Canada.

 

 Shane, Truman, Jordan and myself in Canada next to a giant Moose statue 

While in Canada, we swung though Banff and Jasper, two large national parks located in the Canadian Rockies. To say the parks were beautiful would be like saying “the Pacific Ocean is damp” or “Grabers tell stories sometimes”. We drove to Lake Louise, which is (according to the Lake Louise official website) the “most photographed location on the face of the earth”. In the Summer, over 15,000 people visit the lake EACH DAY. My friends and I arrived right at the end of the touring season. With heavy snows making their way into the forecast, several of the roads and trails around the lake had been closed for the year, along with all of the restrooms, strangely. Shane and I remarked that the “CLOSED FOR THE SEASON” signs hanging on the bathroom doors could be used year-round and nobody would know the difference. But even on a cloudy, overcast day, the emerald-tinted crystal-clear ice-cold water in the lake was sensational. Lake Louise is fed by six glaciers and is over 230 feet deep. It’s not as deep or as blue as Crater Lake in Oregon, but it does give Crater Lake some stiff competition in the beauty department. In fact, all of the things we saw in those two parks (three, if we count the brief detour into Yoho) were absolutely beautiful. My dear friend Jordan has toured much of the Western United States and has visited Yellowstone and Yosemite and many other national parks but as we walked and drove through Jasper, he declared that the Canadians had us whipped in the Rocky Mountain department. The Canadian Rockies are really, really beautiful. Of course, Canada plays this nicely by putting Saskatchewan in your way before you get to Alberta and the mountains. After hours of driving through what we now refer to as “North Nebraska”, even a speed bump would have looked magnificent. 

 Lake Louise, Alberta

 

Found some elk grazing in a campground. Classic Canadian wildlife just struttin' around.

We arrived in Peace River, Alberta and found, to our delight, a bare minimum of snow. We had expected that we’d have to fashion igloos out of ice blocks in order to survive the first night, but instead we were treated to a balmy 40-degree afternoon. “Oh yah,” the locals said “we had aboot 29.5 centimeters of snow a month ago but it melted. This is kinda rare weather to be having this time of year, eh?” 

Brooks gave us a tour of his wife’s hometown and made sure we got a hot, steamy bowl of poutine, which I wouldn’t mind seeing as a booth at the Iowa State Fair. A massive pile of golden French fries slathered with gravy and cheese curds? Ideal. My mouth is watering right now just thinking about it, mostly because my body requires the extra saliva to survive the salt intake. While shopping for some groceries, we discovered why that crossing guard seemed so astonished at our cheese hoard: an equivalent amount of cheese would have cost us $250 in Canada, or three beavers and a good hatchet.

Brooks' wedding photographer captured this excellent moment in the Canadian bush.

At Brooks’ wedding, we helped set up the reception hall. Over the coffee table was a banner that read “SWEET LOVE” so I found the craft supplies and made a banner with the word “MAKING” and added it above the first banner. The groom and the bride found it and, instead of tearing it down hastily like I suspected they would, left it up for the entire wedding and reception. 

 

In November Heidi and I moved out of our trailer. I had been living there for 8 years, two of those years with Heidi. She had transformed the place, repainting every wall and bringing her sparkle and charm to the decoration and layout. She had built such a cozy nest for Owen; we really were reluctant to leave. But we found ourselves caught between two events: the sale of the trailers and the purchase of a home. We needed an in-between house. Heidi and I prayed and prayed about it. Some dear friends of ours offered us a giant farmhouse to stay in and house-sit for them, so we jumped at the chance. It has truly been an answer to prayers. At the time we were moving, Heidi and I were just telling close family that we were pregnant, so it felt extra bittersweet to leave our little trailer that we had prepared together. Heidi and I made the choice to move together, but I still felt awful that our move happened during pregnancy. A preggo momma wants to feel safe and secure. She wants a cozy little nest for her baby. Moving into a new house is the opposite of all of those things. But yet again my wife met each new challenge with bravery and determination, even when we discovered that the house was very, very cold. There had been a woodstove in the living room but it had been removed and replaced with nothing, mostly because the homeowner wanted another woodstove but his children wanted something a little less high-maintenance. They ordered a gas-fired stove to replace it, but it took four weeks to arrive. (My dad and I joked that, upon placement of the order, an elderly man took a pickaxe into the mountain to extract the ore to make the stove.) In those four weeks, we kept the house from freezing by using little electric heaters. There were several windows that had been left open over the Summer, and we didn’t find the last open window until AFTER the blizzard that left 12” of snow on the ground. With 19-degree air pouring through a small window in the cluttered office, we finally discovered why the adjacent laundry room always felt so drafty. Heidi has been marvelously adding her signature to this house. We’re here for just a year, but in the meantime, Heidi has made it our home. It has been a lovely adventure. 

The farmhouse is connected to a smaller guest house, which in the Amish circles is referred to as a “Dawdy Haus” I don’t speak Pennsylvania Dutch but my online searches tell me I’m in the right ballpark. Several helpful references I’ve found online tell me I’m referring to a “Granny Flat” in Australia or a “Mother-in-law house” in Norway. We’ve become good friends with the young couple that lives in whatever-it-is that’s connected to us. Their names are Merlin and Kimmy and they have a darling little girl a few months younger than Owen. We’ve played Rook late into the night on several occasions with them. 

Speaking of wee little children, we’re expecting! Heidi is due June 5^th. We traced back the due date and discovered that Heidi was about a week pregnant when she had her gall bladder surgery. Evidently it was too early for the pregnancy test to detect? We were again grateful for how well the surgery went, since there appears to be no harm or trouble with our Lil Sprout. When Week 20 rolls around, we’ll find out the gender, but Heidi already suspects it’s a girl. Her reasoning is that with this pregnancy, she’s craving all the sugary and sweet things that she normally doesn’t crave. So evidently boys aren’t sweet?? She craved radishes and beets and all sorts of red vegetables with Owen, so I’m not sure what that says about boys. 

This year-end summary has really reminded me of all the things we’ve been through this year; so many blessings and trials all intertwined. I haven’t hardly even scratched the surface of all the things we’ve been up to, but this will suffice for now. God has carried Heidi, Owen and I through so much this year, and we give Him all credit for our health, our home, and our happiness. We love each and every one of you and wish God’s presence in your lives this coming year!

With love,

Shawn, Heidi, and Owen.

Adventures with Heidi: the Case of the Grouchy Gallstone

Lately I've been using this blog as a quick way to keep all my relatives and friends up to date and on the same page with the events that are happening in my family's lives. I'm not convinced that it's truly "quick", that people have been kept "up to date" or that anyone is "on the same page", but it's an effort nonetheless. I'm aware that some of you have discovered my blog by searching for "fish tacos", "real mustache" and "graeber family crest". For those of you who have stumbled here quite innocently and have no idea who I am or what I'm going on about, here's a brief summary:

I'm Shawn. I'm married to an absolute darling named Heidi. She's very sick right now. More on that later.

We have a son, Owen. He's incredible. He's 2 months old. He spent the first 16 days of his life in the NICU. He's doing great now.

We own a red minivan, which we affectionately call the Cherriot. I am unapologetic in my love for the Cherriot.

We live in Southeast Iowa, the most beautiful section of the most beautiful state in the most beautiful country on the face of the earth. Take that, Canary Islands!

That'll do for an introduction; I'll bring in other characters along the way, just to keep you on your toes.

On March 20th, 2018, I raced Heidi to the University of Iowa emergency room (henceforth called "the ER" or "hospital"), where doctors diagnosed and removed a fairly large gallstone that was giving her alarming "10 on a scale of 10" levels of pain. This coming from a woman that knows a thing or two about pain, what with enduring 24 solid hours of agonizing labor just 6 weeks prior. The gallstone was a substantial 6mm troublemaker. It had exited the gall bladder, carved and scraped a lumbering path down the Common Bile Duct, and had wedged itself against a sphincter. I say 'a' sphincter because I discovered that the human body has all manner of sphincters, when all along I had conservatively placed the "number of sphincters in the human body" at "probably just the one". This particular sphincter (I promise, I'll stop using that word) wouldn't allow the passage of the stone, which prevented bile from safely draining through the duct and caused an inappropriate amount of bile to back up and visit the pancreas. What is an appropriate amount of bile backup, you ask? Zero, probably. Bile should not visit the pancreas.

Now some of you are saying "hey, he said a word about a thing I may or may not have heard about at some point!" Good on you, my friend. You're sharp! The pancreas is the organ that produces insulin and keeps most people from diabetes. I'm not most people; I have Type 1 Diabetes. The pancreas also produces several different enzymes that help digest food. Store that nugget of information away for later. The gall bladder is nestled comfortably against the liver, where bile is produced. The liver is very eager to produce bile. It just makes more and more and more of the slimy, yellow-brown enzyme like it's doing the world a favor. The gall bladder acts like a holding tank for extra bile. "Whoa there, hoss. This food doesn't need that much bile!" the gall bladder is often heard saying to the liver. Occasionally, the gall bladder accumulates little bits of cholesterol and hardens them into gallstones. This is surprisingly common. I say 'surprisingly' because I was under the impression that gallstones happened to elderly, crotchety men that spent their time swilling whiskey sours and muttering bitterly about the economy.

"In the United States, an estimated 10 to 15 percent of adults have gallstone disease. 

About a million new cases are diagnosed each year, and some 800,000 operations are 

performed to treat gallstones, making gallstone disease the most common gastrointestinal 

disorder requiring hospitalization." -US News

That's a lot of grouchy alcoholics. If you would like to read more about gallstones, check this link out. It's where I pulled that excerpt from, so when you get to that part of the article, you can say "Hey, I read this somewhere before."

The gall bladder, liver, and pancreas all share a hallway where food-devouring, highly acidic juices are pumped into the small intestine. This hallway is called the Common Bile Duct. So we've got all these neighboring glands and organs, workin' hard behind the scenes to hide the evidence of your 3am run to Taco Bell. Some cholesterol gets caught undigested in the gall bladder, where concentrated bile juices harden it into a stone. The stone can sit in the gall bladder indefinitely but at some point, without so much as a "howdy do", it'll roll out and slam through the sphincter. I'm sorry, I said sphincter again. I just don't know how to describe these events without saying "sphincter". Perhaps I can substitute "Muscular Opening In Slippery Tunnels", or MOIST. The gallstone's journey to the MOIST causes a severe amount of pain. The pain is not as severe as a kidney stone, but it's still up there in the "very unpleasant" territory. Heidi would feel like she couldn't breathe; as if a vise was squeezing her lungs. She would be doubled over in pain for about 20-30 minutes before the pain relented. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that Heidi had multiple gallstones. At the time, we had no idea what was going on. We'd be winding down for the evening and just crawling into bed when SLAMMO (Sweet Lord Almighty, My Midsection's Ouchy) a gallstone would have Heidi gasping for her next breath. Heidi was pregnant with Owen at the time, and we weren't sure if this was a worrisome omen or just one more funky side-effect of manufacturing a human. It turned out to be a worrisome omen, or WOmen...uh, that's enough acronyms for one blog. This happened three or four times during Heidi's pregnancy, with each instance causing more and more concern. Was this a spiritual attack? Heidi and I would spend time praying and crying and the vise-like weight on Heidi's lungs would release and she would once again breathe freely. I'd ask Heidi if she wanted to travel to the ER, but she's a tough little cookie and would say "no, I think I'm alright."

Fast forward to March 19th, Monday evening. Heidi was feeling short of breath and nauseous. She was no longer pregnant, so we couldn't blame her symptoms on that. We decided to stay at home rather than join our weekly prayer group. Her pain didn't let up, and by Tuesday afternoon, she had vomited several times. When I got home from work, Heidi informed me that she was unable to keep any food down, and was now unable to keep even water down. "I need to go to the hospital," she said.

When we arrived, the ER was busily attending to a roomful of people that were also having a rough day. Heidi's vital signs were checked in a tiny entryway/hallway by a technician who swooshed around on a wheeled office chair. Once he was satisfied that Heidi's vitals looked stable and she wasn't suffering from heart problems, he sent us back to the waiting room. We waited for an eternity, which turns out to be around 40 minutes, to be ushered into a consultation bay where Heidi was more thoroughly examined, poked, and prodded. The pain was mainly in her abdomen; it fluctuated in waves up to her chest and down to her pelvis. Heidi was asked about previous hospitalizations and surgeries, of which she'd had none. She was given some pain medications and we were sent back to the ER waiting room to stay until a hospital bed opened up. An ultrasound was ordered, and revealed several things: a gallstone causing mayhem and a very inflamed pancreas. Well, I think it was the ultrasound. Honestly, I'm not sure the ultrasound showed the gallstone. My memory is pretty foggy. I'll try my best to recount things factually but I am by no means a doctor, so feel free to take my account with nutritionist-approved amount of salt. Anyway, a gallstone removal was scheduled.

By that night, Heidi was placed in a room shared with another patient. I took Owen home and spent the night discovering just how much Heidi did to take care of an infant when most people are sound asleep. Once again, I was not most people. Before I was able to get back to the hospital on Wednesday morning, Heidi had already undergone the procedure to remove the gallstone. They had done an ERCP, which stands for Endoscopic Retrograde Cholangio-Pancreatography. Basically, the doctors used an endoscope to observe the pancreas and remove the gallstone. More basically, good people used a camera on a bendy straw to look at Heidi's innards and make the pain go away. While removing the stone, the doctors made a small incision on the bile duct sphinc, uh, MOIST, to let any additional stones pass through without hanging up. Additional stones? Yep, the doctors were fairly certain that Heidi's gall bladder had additional stones, waiting to cause additional mayhem. A cholecystectomy was ordered. The "Chole" prefix refers to the gall bladder, the "-cystectomy" is the removal part. Surgical removal of the gall bladder.

What does a life without a gall bladder look like? The gall bladder stores excess bile, bile helps dissolve fat, fat makes food delicious. Therefore, no gall bladder = no delicious, right? My math is impeccable! Well, not quite. Without the extra bile on hand to dissolve Thanksgiving Dinner properly, a person's stool might become--I'm using a direct quotation from a doctor--"more floaty". "So Heidi won't have to go on a low-fat diet the rest of her life?" I asked. "Certainly not," her doctor replied, "In fact, she could have an onion-ring eating contest if she wanted. Of course, if she feels nauseous or pained, she should cut back on fatty foods." The day before, I had never heard of a gall bladder surgery. Now, I was being told by members of my church that they'd had the surgery and were doing just fine. That's fascinating to me...people that I'm acquainted with have had surgeries done to their bodies and they're not talking about it, for some reason. If I had a part of me chopped out by professionals and I lived to tell the tale, it would most likely be the second thing I tell you; the first thing being my name. Nevertheless, it was reassuring to know that Heidi's experience was not ultra rare.

The ERCP procedure stirred up quite a bit of stuff and Heidi's body reacted by turning up the heat. Heidi soon had a fever of 101, with occasional spikes to 102. This was an expected reaction, but the fever lasted for a week, which was not expected. It became evident that her pancreas was severely inflamed. The inflammation was worrying the doctors.

Three days into Heidi's hospital visit, her heart rate spiked and her blood oxygen levels dropped. This indicated a clot in the lungs which got all sorts of doctors running, literally. I was sitting with Heidi, Heidi's parents Alan & Jean, and Owen. A nurse quietly mentioned to Alan & Jean that she would like to escort them to a family waiting room. Some doctors were coming to see Heidi, and the small room was about to get crowded. Heidi's parents took Owen with them. Two minutes later, 13 doctors and nurses were crammed into the room, shouting for vitals and an oxygen mask. Some of the doctors were huffing from their sprint across the hospital. The nurse attending Heidi had been told to alert the doctors if there was any sudden change in her vitals, so when her oxygen dropped and pulse spiked, the nurse hit the "ALL HANDS ON DECK" button that paged the doctors. A technician wheeled in a portable X-ray machine, propped Heidi up in bed, and placed a lead shield behind her back. X-ray photos were taken of her lungs. At this point, she was taking shallow breaths but the oxygen mask was bringing her oxygen back up to a tolerable level. Heidi was whisked to the ICU, hospital bed and all. I followed closely behind, wheeling a cart with Heidi's bags.

The next three days were spent in the ICU. I would video message Heidi from home so she could see baby Owen, who was not permitted to visit his mama in the extra dangerous germ-ridden ICU. The X-rays of Heidi's lungs showed no clots, which was an incredible blessing. Heidi would be on an oxygen cannula for the next 10 days, which just added to the host of tubes and wires and hoses covering her body. Heidi was on two separate IV's and had an array of sensors monitoring her pulse and blood oxygen saturation. She had a blood pressure cuff on one arm, automatically taking readings every 30 minutes. She had a catheter installed, so she didn't have to get out of bed to urinate. She was being pumped full of bags of saline fluid, along with a high-power antibiotic and Dilaudid, a concentrated form of morphine.

I would travel home each night and return to Heidi each day. I would work during the daylight hours and then visit Heidi in the evening. Heidi was asleep most of the time; napping in between the barrage of CT scans and vital checks. We discovered that portions of Heidi's pancreas had necrotized. The pancreatitis, or inflammation of the pancreas, had been more advanced than we first thought. Remember that nugget about the pancreas producing enzymes to digest food? Well Heidi's pancreas had been producing insane amounts of enzymes, which were busy eating the pancreas itself. "How bad is it?" I asked the doctor. "Is fifty percent necrotized? Eighty percent?" The doctor paused for a moment before responding "We'd say it's closer to eighty percent," she said. The necrotized pancreas was the reason Heidi was getting pumped full of antibiotics. The doctors had not seen any signs of infection, but since the pancreas was this damaged already, any infection would be life-threatening. Better to risk the side-effects of continuous high-power antibiotics rather than find an infection and be three days behind. One of the side-effects of the antibiotics was the potential to cause a sustained fever. I commented to the doctors that I'd like to see her taken off the antibiotics, or switched to a different one, so that Heidi could get a break from her fever. They complied and changed Heidi's antibiotic. It was a variety that was still just as strong, but was not known to cause fevers. Heidi's fever remained a few more days, and finally subsided. We are not sure if it was due to the antibiotics. Meanwhile, Heidi's daily blood draws were showing excellent results. Two of her enzyme levels, which were supposed to remain below 100 and 80, respectively, were initially at 2,400 and 1,200, respectively. Those enzyme levels lowered day by day, until they settled to an elevated level around 200. Her white blood cell count had elevated, and then lowered back to normal parameters. Her heart and kidneys were functioning splendidly. There was minimal fluid buildup in the lungs, and the liver looked good. The gall bladder was quiet, like a dog that knew it had done something naughty and the owner was looking for a newspaper to roll up. We were waiting for the pancreas to settle down in order to schedule the gall bladder removal. The doctors wanted to have the surgery performed while Heidi was still in the hospital, to finish everything in one visit. They had hoped it would only take a day or two, but as the days stretched into weeks, the doctors began to consider postponing the surgery to let Heidi recover at home.

At this point, we had a clearer picture of what was happening. The pancreatitis was caused by the gallstone. The pancreatitis caused the pancreas to start digesting itself. The inflammation was causing continued pain, even though the gallstone was gone. In order to keep from irritating the pancreas, a feeding tube was pushed down Heidi's nostril and lowered into the duodenum, an area of the small intestine just below the pancreas. There, oatmeal-colored protein juice could be fed into Heidi right past the pancreas without it knowing a thing. A "bridle", the fancy term for what looked like a white shoelace, was pulled in one nostril and out the other to make sure her feeding tube didn't get yanked out in her sleep. With Heidi's fever faded away and her doctor-mandated stint of antibiotics completed, Heidi was released to come home. She had been in the hospital 14 days at this point. Her feeding tube had a kink in it, so she had to have it removed and replaced with a new tube, which wasn't as traumatic as the first time. As I drove her up the lane to our place, she burst into tears.

Heidi is still on her feeding tube, and was given enough protein slurry to remain on it for the next several weeks. With time, we are told, Heidi's pancreas will recover and she will not become insulin dependent. We spent Easter in the hospital and thought about how Christ rose from death to life The gall bladder removal will take place at some point in the future, depending on how smoothly her pancreas improves. For the friends and relatives that suggested lifestyle changes or natural ways to reduce gallstones and avoid the gall bladder surgery, we are so grateful for your concern and for the way you would like to see Heidi keep her gall bladder. We understand that fully. At the time, we had no idea how life-threatening her condition was, and after talking to the doctors, we feel very much at peace about removing the gall bladder so that Heidi's pancreas is not threatened again.

Many friends and family members bathed us in prayer through our entire hospital stay, and we are so grateful. Heidi loved all the gifts, cards, flowers, texts, phone calls, words of encouragement, and visits while she was in the hospital. Heidi's mom stayed by her side for several days and nights at the hospital, and cared for Owen for several days. My parents cut their trip to Florida short and drove home a few days early to help me out and check on Heidi. Dear angels brought vast supplies of frozen breast milk for Owen and groceries for me, which was incredible. Others sent cash for things that we needed. Several of Heidi's friends came over to make sure dishes and laundry were taken care of. Several ladies from church with great big Momma hearts babysat Owen while I worked. We were absolutely, thoroughly pampered and blessed in so many. Others offered assistance and help if I needed anything. I was completely blown away by the outpouring of love and help by our community, and it was a definite blessing to have both my family and Heidi's family close by. We have a journey of recovery ahead, but Heidi's a warrior princess and things are looking good. If you think of us, please continue to pray for swift recovery and ample rest for Heidi.