Unexpected

It was a beautiful October afternoon and I gathered up my courage to go door-to-door for the Romney campaign.  I had never done anything like that before and I was rather nervous, especially since it was to my neighbors.  I love to talk politics with anyone, but knocking on doors?  That was a stretch for me.  I truly felt like I needed to put in some effort beyond reading articles, blogs, and watching the news.

I headed down my street with a list of contacts and information from the campaign.  Luckily my first visit was very friendly and it helped ease me in to knocking on doors.  As I continued my way down the street I noticed a man at the end of the street that seemed to be texting while his small children were crying.  I didn't do anything at first because there could have been a million different reasons for that scenario.  I kept knocking on doors as I worked my way down the street.  The kids kept crying and I began to think something might be wrong so I decided to go see if I could help.

As I got closer, I recognized some of the kids from a family that we were friends with at church.  I starting talking to them as I walked over hoping to distract them from their crying.  I soon got close enough where I could see things were not alright.  Their dad, who appeared to be trying to text, was not acting normal, he was sweaty and pale, and was completely unaware I was even there.  I went over to talk to him and when he didn't respond, I spoke to him again and touched him on the arm.  He immediately collapsed onto me. 

I was stunned, dropped everything I was holding, and held him up the best I could.  Just weeks before we had this family over for dinner and found out he was diabetic.  I was struggling to get my phone out of my pocket to call 911 when a neighbor who had seen, ran over and offered to help.  We got 911 on the phone and I was able to tell them that I knew he was diabetic and he was going into shock.  I kept talking to the kids telling them that everything would be alright.  Just then, his other son came up on his bicycle with some orange juice concentrate and I balanced the dad on me while I talked to him and slowly fed him some of the orange juice.

It was only a few minutes before the police were almost there and some other neighbors that had come outside helped me lower him to the ground, right there in the middle of the street.  By that time he was completely unconscious.  Soon the ambulance was there and it was so helpful for me to know his name and what was going on.  It was scary when they couldn't find a vein to put an IV in and the couldn't revive him.  The kids, were of course, so scared and couldn't stop crying so I was holding two of them as another neighbor pushed the baby in the stroller.  Within a few more minutes, the mom came running up.  When the text messages she had been receiving from her husband started to not make any sense, she felt something was wrong and came home.

The EMP's worked for, what felt like a very long time, trying to revive him.  I stayed there helping with the children and making sure his wife was doing okay.  Ken texted wondering if I had seen what was going on at the end of the street and I texted back that I was in the middle of it.  Things finally started to improve when his wife turned off his insulin pump and they fed him a peanut butter and honey sandwich.  He was finally stabilized enough that they wanted to take him to the hospital.  Just then, Ken had arrived and so did another man from church.  I whispered to the wife that they were able to give him a blessing if she wanted.  He had come around enough to decide that he just wanted to recover at home so Ken followed them home to help.  I loaded up the kids and took all four to my house.  I wanted to give them so time and peace and quiet at home.  The kids were soon all much happier after I fed them and we got out the toys for them to play with.  We were able to have them over for several hours and when their parents came to pick them up, everyone was much better.

I thought a lot about what had happened.  It was rather traumatic, especially with the children crying hysterically through much of the ordeal.  I truly felt that it was not a coincidence that I just happened to walking down the street and we had recently had that family over to dinner where we got to know them a lot better.  I was so grateful to a loving Heavenly Father that trusted me and allowed me to serve in that situation.  What a blessing to be in a position that I was able to help.  Needless to say, I didn't get my route done that day, but I felt wonderful knowing that God had used me that day, even if it was in an unexpected way.