Welcome Back Ryan!

Hey everybody, this is Ryan - one of the photographers of the Portrait Shoppe. You may recognize me from such films as the "Preparing for the Shoot" video and its sequel, "Preparing for the Image Selection." ;-) (You can watch those both by clicking here

I wanted to give you all an update on something that happened to me recently. About 3 weeks ago I started to feel a little dizzy for no apparent reason. Well, within 24 hours I couldn't even stand up! I was also horribly nauseous - every time I moved I had to throw up. My wife called some amazing friends from our church who came and watched our kids, and she drove me to the ER...I couldn't even tell when the car was moving or stopped. I was immediately seen by the Emergency Room staff at Central Baptist Hospital.

We had no idea what was wrong - it could have been anything from virus to stroke to brain tumor. I had a very extensive MRI & MRA and that ruled out all of the scary stuff. Michael, one of the owners of the Portrait Shoppe, and his daughter Krista came to visit me in the hospital along with a few other friends from our church. I was sent home at about 1 am with a diagnosis of "Dizziness," a follow up appointment with an ENT, and some medicine to help me cope with the dizziness and nausea. (My brothers gave me the alternative diagnosis of "too much heavy partying" - thanks guys!)

For 3 or 4 days all I could do was lie in bed - any movement made me feel terrible. The ENT helped to rule out further neurological problems and ear stones (like kidney stones or gall stones, but in your inner ear), and they also gave me a diagnosis of "Dizziness." They said it was likely that I got a bad inner ear infection which caused the severe vertigo and that it would take some time for all the inflammation to go down.

Sure enough, it took more than 2 weeks before I felt normal again. It was a slow road to recovery, but I'm finally back! I am so grateful for all the people who gave us some help, not least of all Shelly for covering all of my time missed at the Portrait Shoppe. I learned that have a lot of good friends who really care about me and my family, and I am so very thankful! I'm still taking it slowly, but it's good to be vertical again!

Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers!