Hi Don, This is a tough and awkward message for me to send. Your work, exposing fraudsters, has a preventative effect. A little over 10 years ago my life crumbled, and slipped through my fingers. I had injured my back in a workplace accident. At the time I was working in healthcare as an RN in Seattle. This injury lead me to having surgery to correct the damage, and thankfully it was successful; something you don\t hear to often when it comes to back problems. The unfortunate problem was that I developed an addiction to oxycontin. Even though the pain had stopped after the surgery, I continued to abuse the drug. I became one of the 1000\s of people whose lives were so negatively impacted by this drug. I became a drug seeker. The ironic part of that is the fact that I had done a lot of work in ER as a Nurse, and prided myself in spotting the drug seekers and getting them out of the ER, so that we could treat legitimate medical emergency\s. The fallout was horrendous - my marriage broke down, I lost my kids, close friends and other family members. My exwife ended up meeting someone from Sweden; she relocated there with our daughters shortly after we split. I haven\t seen nor talked to my daughters since 5:00 pm on September 22 of 2002 - frankly speaking I don\t deserve their love and attention. My failure was far too great, I have tried to reach out, but there is no response. That confirms it for me as well - my failure was far too great. Anyway, I gave you that information not to gain your pity, or to have a pity party for myself. It forms the background of something stupid I nearly did. Recently I found myself thinking wouldn\t it be nice to be respected and well regarded by those around me. What would it be like to not be thought of as a loser druggy? I was starting to formulate a new identity for myself, and that included a past of being a highly decorated Special Forces member. Some how, I stumbled across one of your youtube videos, was it by chance? who knows. All I can say is that after listening to the passion and anger in your voice when you are confronting these people, something inside me \clicked\, and I have not stopped thinking about what a fool I was for even entertaining the idea. This has been tough to put out there, and I am embarrassed in myself. Why am I telling you this? I want you to know that your work has a preventative effect as well. I am trying to rebuild myself, first and foremost so that I can enjoy life, then second for my daughters - who I hope and pray one day will forgive me and want to know me. Thank you Don, I hope to attend your program one day. I think that it would be a great way for me to challenge myself into getting back my sense of accomplishment and pride as a person. Greg
Posted on: Tue, 02 Dec 2014 15:02:01 +0000