Tyler was born in the Portland, Oregon area and lived there for over thirty years of his life. He was the baby of the family with one full brother, as well as one half-sister and three-half brothers.
Tyler's father was a doctor and that was something Tyler gave serious thought to becoming as well. In the end, he decided that he didn't want a job that would require so much of his time and attention...time and attention that would be taken away from his family. And, he made this decision before he was married or even knew me. Pretty nifty, eh?
Instead of pursuing the route of a doctor, Tyler decided to join the Army Reserves and did so when he turned twenty. He spent fourteen months in active duty training in San Antonio, Texas and became a respiratory therapist (RT) through them.
I know, I know...what the heck is a respiratory therapist? I'm supposing some of you know, but for those who don't, a respiratory therapist is the one that takes care of the breathing for patients in the hospital. They run ventilators and life-support systems. When the decision is made to take someone off of life-support to die, they are the unlucky ones that get to pull the plug. If someone has breathing problems, RTs are the ones that do the breathing treatments (asthma, breathing problems related to smoking, lung disease, etc). If someone dies and a code is called, they get to be part of the hospital staff that runs like they are in a movie to get to the room as fast as they can to perform CPR and try to revive the person. They take care of women in labor who have breathing issues, as well as babies who are born with breathing problems. It's quite an important job. In fact, when Emma had her heart surgery, the RT that ran the ventilator had actually been someone Tyler had trained. So, we knew she was good!
Tyler served in the army reserves for ten years. During that time he was the director of respiratory therapy for their unit. He was also the non-commissioned officer in charge of operations and training for his unit. At the time he was discharged, he was the acting-first sergeant. He loved his time in the military and is very grateful for the experience.
While in the army reserves, he worked at a couple hospitals, both in the Portland area. The first hospital he worked at, he was an RT and worked as an educator to train those who were going through RT school (they would go to the hospital and Tyler would train them). At the second hospital he worked at, he was an RT supervisor.
Tyler would never tell anyone this, other than me, but he was given the employee of the month award due to his awesome patient care. He had been nominated by the labor & delivery nurses who had observed him caring for babies after birth who were struggling to breath. They said that he had a special touch with babies and were impressed with his abilities. They had a fun party for him with lots of food and people said lots of nice things about him (and I even got to go!). He got his picture on the wall. The interesting thing to me is that Tyler doesn't like to take care of children. He does an excellent job, but he says that it is too emotional. It's hard to not become really emotionally involved and it can be very wearing and stressful on an on-going basis.
Moving along, Tyler joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints when he was twenty-eight years old. Shortly after that we started dating, got engaged, and then got married (more of that story to come!). Then we had a couple kiddos!
September of 2005, we moved to Texas where he worked at a hospital here for a while. It was not an ideal place to work. After about six months, he found a super awesome hospital to work at. Within a year's time he went from an RT, to a supervising RT, then to manager of the cardiopulmonary department. His new position is now hospital management instead of patient care. Yep, that means no more patient care for him. It's actually something he's very excited about. He was interested in trying out something a little new and he loves his job. As manager of the department, it means he gets to wear nice clothes instead of scrubs (and he is very cute in his work clothes!). It also means he gets to hire and fire people, have his own little office, go to catered meetings with lots of yummy food... I'm sure there's a lot more to it than that because people from work call him rather frequently when he's home and he gets asked all sorts of weird things.
He is currently in school to finish his bachelor's. He was close to finishing back around the time Emma had heart surgery and ended up pulling out of school to focus on the family. Things have settled and he can now refocus his efforts on finishing school.
I don't know why I put this last, since it's the most important thing to Tyler and that is us - his family. He has to be one of the most dedicated husbands and fathers I've ever met. He puts his all into being the most loving and caring guy I know. You know what? I just realized how I'm totally showing him off and now my description of myself seems really lame. Oh well. Back to what I was saying...Tyler has a great love for his children and tries his best to be the best father he can possibly be.
I absolutely love being married to him and couldn't imagine being married to anyone else. He's my best friend and I love spending time with him and having him be the father of our children. I hope and pray that our little boys grow up to be exactly like him...and that our little girl(s) can find a husband(s) similar to her dad!
