An eyelash came free, triggering a meltdown; Miles writes that Tammy slumped against the locked sauna door, weeping—but Jim did not open it.
She was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1996, from which she suffered intermittently for over a decade before dying of the disease in 2007.
She appeared in her son Jay's documentary series , wherein they talked about her cancer treatments.
Ironically, Messner was convicted on bankruptcy fraud charges in 1996 and was sentenced to 27 months in federal prison.