Ever since I can remember I cared about people. When I was 7 I got a reel to reel tape recorder that my dad didn’t want any more and in the spirit of Martin Luther King, I would make speeches about people’s rights to be cared for, there freedom and the right to be respected. As a teenager, people fascinated me and I would go to the mall for hours and just observe them. I had been physically abused by a father that ruled with an iron fist.
The human Brain fascinated me and I decided I wanted to be a doctor of neurology. I struggled with relationships because I was so inferior, I thought.
I met a lady who had two kids, a boy and a girl, and I thought the kids were cute and she needed me so I asked her to marry me. We went to the Los Angeles temple and were sealed soon after but we were never happy because she could not give me what I needed and that was love. I couldn’t give her what she needed, which was unconditional love, and neither one of us knew what that was at that time. I kept looking for something outside my marriage but could never find it. I demanded that they love me and when they didn’t I let them know it. I was selfish and unloving, I had never learned how to love and my children paid a price.
So we moved to my home town of Chico, California and went to work for a Regional Medical center as a CNA. Working in the ER and the central supply, I interacted with everyone at the hospital and I had a real opportunity to study people. All the staff would come to me to ask me advise them on what to do with different situations they were in and I seemed to love helping them solve their problems. I was very good at understanding the situation and I intuitively knew what people needed. I took psychology as my secondary major in school, which were extremely fun classes. While I was there I took a seminar series on NLP neuro linguistic programing.
I went to Butte College and started out as a engineering major but was then excepted to BYU’S Electrical Engineering College. I was flattered; it was a prestigious school so my ego got in the way because I needed to feel important. When I got there I was miserable both at home and at school. Engineering was not what fed my soul, I was a people person.
So I changed my major to Psychology and loved my classes. I also took a course in hypnosis thinking it would help me as a therapist when I graduated. I was still lost, so I played more than studied and was put on academic probation. My dad was in Georgia and was working for a company called Vida France, a French bread and Croissant company. He told me he just made $10,000 dollars this week and would give me half of what he made if I would come and work with him, so I packed my family, after he sent me some money, and we moved to Marietta Georgia.
It turned out, once I got there, it was only commission on that amount and I only got a percentage of it. By now I was interested in all kinds of holistic things because I felt humans had the power within them to heal and did not need drugs to do it. I took, and completed, a course on Reflexology. Competition with the French bread business was increasing in the Atlanta area and my dad could not afford to let me work for him anymore, so I had to find work elsewhere. So I went to work for another French bread company called Voila French Bread and Pastries.
While I was there I found a college in Norcross, Georgia that was based solely on the principles of Hypnosis. So I took all the courses including the advance courses, and completed an internship for one year and graduated as a clinical Hypnotherapist. I took courses on Grapho therapeutics, which is hand writing analysis. While in the program, I had to see a therapist in order to complete the program.
Well after being in therapy a very short time, the bakery bounced my pay check and I had no money to support my seven kids. I felt this great anxiety come up and I was very fearful, but I was not going to let this happen again so I marched in to the owner’s office and demanded they give me my money. They were so arrogant they looked down on American’s. He said, “What you want me to do?” Get me my money I said, then he said, “Do you want me to take the money out of my personal account?” I told him yes and I will drive you myself. I was shaking the whole time. I then took him to the bank telling him he could not do this anymore. I walked him in the bank and made him withdraw the money from his account and give me what he owed me. I took him back to the bakery and left. I felt more Empowered than ever in my life.
I then went to work for a friend in my ward who was an auctioneer; he made me the sales and promotion manager for Lee Deal Auction Company. So he sent me to auction school where I could learn to read people and learn the auction business. I graduated top of my class and received the honorary title of colonel from the state of Tennessee. It was a commission job and it was fun but didn’t make any money. So my family suffered without any income but I had fun.
I moved to Norcross, Georgia because I was doing my internship and had gone back to working with my dad but was hatting it. It seemed I could do nothing right and my dad was always yelling at me. I found out that I could get VA benefits for going back to school again so I moved to Roam, Georgia and started working at the State Mental Hospital as a health services technician and started school at Floyd College, as Psychology major. With full time employment, the VA and a scholarship, I earned for getting straight A’s, we were making enough to make ends meet, barely. I was never home because of working and school. The wife would complain I wasn’t working enough and then complain I was never at home.
By the time I finally graduated and I had started working at a Colombia hospital as an aide on the cardiac floor and worked part-time at the Psych hospital. I continued as a nurse working at both hospitals but was working so much now at the Colombia hospital I could not keep up with working on the TB unit.
I continued my love of alternative health so took a course on healing touch and became a healing touch therapist as well. Then I took a course on kinesiology. I started a clinic in my home called The Counseling and Hypnotherapy Center of North West Georgia. I saw a few patients here and there. My relationship with my wife was deteriorating and I was being abusive to my kids. I was so angry that they would not love me especially since I wasn’t getting it from my wife. I missed the point that it was my job to love them, not the other way around, I was crashing.
Working all the time I started hating my life, my marriage, and being put down by my wife every time I turned around. Worst of all my kids weren’t happy. Then I had a partner come and use one of my rooms as therapist and she told me about a member of my ward who she had been talking to that had changed her life. So I called him up and made an appointment to see him. His Name was Greg Baer, and he was a doctor that was a member of my church. We had cleaned his office for him while I was going to school to make money. When I went to see him I was there three hours and he was telling me how lovable I was. I thought this guy is full of crap! I told him my whole story, what a horrible person I was, and how I almost got thrown out of nursing school because I was so bad on and on I went. I could not convince this man, who I had been afraid of since I met him, that he was so wrong about me. He would not change he would say yep you did those things but you are still lovable. By the end I was exhausted but I wanted to believe him. The second time I met with him I melted and just sobbed. For the first time in my life after all the years of being put down and abused by my father then my wife, I felt loved. And that began my journey of Real love. I closed my clinic.
I decided since I was a nurse I could move anywhere, so I took a job in Utah with a travel nurse position assigned to IHC pediatric home health. I was invited for an interview for a nursing position at First Choice Home Health and they were so impressed with me they asked me to be their director of nursing. I was very flattered but I didn’t want to just do something because of ego. They asked me to come and talk to the owner for a second interview. I met with her and was so impressed with this loving lady that I really wanted the job. Two days later the owner called personally and offered me the job.
One weekend we came down to St. George on a whim and found the house that we wanted and it seemed like all the cards were falling into place. I saw the ward care clinic doctor, Dr. Van Gills, down here first while we came down for a vacation and decided to continue to follow up with him since we were moving to Saint George. We spent a year and a half with antibiotics IV, multiple surgeries, and hyperbaric treatments. I was healed and then hanger prosthetics made an AFO for me to use but subsequently it rubbed a hole in the side of my heel and that would not heal and ultimately caused me to lose my leg. Before the amputation I had several partial amputations. In the end we went in one last time for surgery on my right leg and Doctor Klump felt due to my vascular studies he could save the leg.
Being a nurse I always knew there was a possibility of having to amputate once he was in there for surgery. Sure enough my expectations had come true but I woke up with no legs with an explanation that when they got in there the circulation wasn’t good enough even if they did the surgery it wouldn’t have healed. I thought it was interesting to note that I had his blessing for the stake president just before surgery and in the blessing he said I would be healed is clearly as I’m writing these letters now I you will be healed. It was just not the way you might think, I had no more infection my body so I felt better than I had in two years.
Now when I woke up I had a decision to make and that decision was to be miserable and unhappy or choose joy in my life and I chose the latter. They say it takes six months before the amputee adjust to it emotionally on December 12 I lost my limb on October 10 I was in a test socket by day. In December I was back to work full-time. I never looked back I never whined about the loss of my leg, my life was truly blessed I went to work after recovering with Gentiva home health. I worked for a year and a half with them but they would never give me full time. One of my supervisors told me that Gentiva was never going to take care of your needs and that I needed to start taking care of me. I called and made an appointment and they were so impressed with me decided to offer me a full-time position when I went for my first day at orientation. My boss asked me after meeting with all of the staff how much it would take for me to come to them full-time so I told them and they offered me a full-time position that very day with benefits and increased wages. They were so impressed with my job that in six months they made me the clinical director of the Saint George office. I then became the hospice nurse for Canyon and did that for eight months until Eddie comes down one day decided he wants to change people in the office. Three days later I ended up in the hospital with a septic infection in my body and especially my foot. I went in for surgery and they removed part of my toes in my left foot
Remember that life is always about our choices and we can live happily or not it is up to us.