RESCUED! MY STORY CONTINUES...

"When love broke through,

You found me in the darkness

wanderin' through the desert.

I was a hopeless fool...

I did all that I could do to undo me, 

but You loved me enough to pursue me."

          Toby Mac

So I reached for the burner phone on the bedside table...mine was in my car...and reluctantly dialed Marilyn's number.  She answered, and at the sound of her voice I immediately started crying.  "I'm sick and I need help."  She asked "Where are you?" and I told her.  She told me to not go anywhere...and of course I couldn't...and she would call me right back.  We hung up, and a few minutes later she called.
She told me that a good friend of ours, John, who lived in St. George, about an hour and a half away from Las Vegas, could come get me.  But I said no, I didn't want John to see me in this condition.  And I certainly didn't want to explain to him why I was there and what I had done.  We finished that call, and a few more minutes went by before she called back and told me she would catch a flight and would come and get me.  All I remember then is that when I ended that call I was able to fall into a deep sleep right away, and the next thing I knew my phone was ringing again.  I could tell it was now dark outside, but I had no idea how much time had passed. It was Marilyn, and she was outside my room.  So I got up, opened the door and let her in.

She was with Vicky Macias, who is our son Adam's mother-in-law.  Vicky is awesome...as I like to say, "large and in charge."  She is the one that will make a decision, and lead the way.  She is exactly who Marilyn needed then.
Marilyn helped me pack up my stuff and get dressed, get in the back of my very small Kia Forte Koup, and Vicky drove us home to South Jordan, about four hours away.  I spent most of that four hours curled up in the backseat in and out of sleep, still sick, trying not to throw up.  Somewhere around Nephi I could hear that we were driving through snow and slush, sat up, looked out the window and saw that it was indeed snowing.  Vicky had just moved to Utah from the bay area in northern California, and had zero experience driving in snow.  So for her, and Marilyn, this was tough going.  But they pushed through...

We arrived at the IHC hospital in Riverton, about 10 minutes away from our home, about 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning on Sunday...I really had no clue what time is was.  Marilyn wanted me to be checked out physically, and I also talked with a counselor, who told me I was depressed.  Really!?  I had no idea...
We finally got home about five in the morning, and I went to bed and slept.  Once again, this timeline is pretty fuzzy for me, but I woke up sometime in the early afternoon on Sunday.  I found out later that Adam had come over and had gone through my phones, and discovered my internet history, location tracking, and text message history, so they pretty well figured out the whole story.  At some point after I woke up. I remember sitting on the side of the bed with Marilyn when she asked, "You cheated on me didn't you?"  And I simply muttered "Yes." But after that "yes" I felt a huge weight lifted...

When I woke up I was kind of hungry, so I fixed myself a waffle and a couple of fried eggs, ate them, and then sat in the family room...pretty much in a daze.  All of a sudden I felt pain in my chest, and pain running down my arms.  Heart attack?  I knew the signs, but had never had any problems with my heart...at least physical problems. I told Marilyn what was happening, and she suggested I just get back in bed.  I did, but the pain didn't go away at all.  I told her I needed to go to the hospital...
So off we went, to the emergency room I had just left maybe ten hours before.  I was admitted, they checked my heart, and told us it was beating at about 188 beats per minute...it was going crazy!
So they put me under, and shocked my heart to get it back to a normal rhythm.  I woke up in a recovery room, by myself, staring at the ceiling.  I wasn't sick any longer, but I was out of gas...completely exhausted...and just didn't care what happened to me going forward.  I'd really lost my will.  Not really my will to be alive, but my will to live...if that makes any sense.

I remember Adam and Kristen coming in to see me.  That was the first time I had seen them since I came home, and my cousin Karen and her husband Bill came to visit as well.  I remember Adam and Kristen's husband, Shayn, giving me a priesthood blessing, which I so needed, even though my faith was pretty shot at that point in my life.

I still believed in God through all my mess, and I had a testimony of the gospel I had been taught and believed in my whole life, but I had reached the point..."past feeling"...where I just didn't care anymore.  I couldn't do it.  I couldn't do the things God wanted me to do, and I couldn't be the man He wanted me to be.  So I had given up, knew I was going to Hell, and could care less.

Well, once again we went home from the hospital late Sunday night.  I don't know when I woke up Monday morning, but I remember Vicky coming over to watch me while Marilyn went to the pharmacy to get me a prescription.  I was not supposed to be alone, and I was still zombied out.
Then I remember Kristen coming over and telling me that I needed serious help...at an inpatient rehab facility.  She had checked with her bishop, her stake president father-in-law, and our bishop, but none of them knew of any place for me.  So she got online.
She told me that she had found a place in St. George called Desert Solace, a rehab facility specializing in porn and sexual addiction.  She told me it was a ninety day program...three months...and it would be great for me to spend the winter in Southern Utah.  I asked how much it cost, and when she told me I almost died.  But she argued that I had had almost $39000 in cash, so we'd use some...most...of that to pay for it.  She had talked to Mark Jorgensen, the owner of Desert Solace, and they had space for me.  I said we'd go tomorrow, but that wasn't her plan.  I was going now.

Forty-five minutes later I had a bag packed, and with Vicky driving once again, Marilyn riding shotgun, and me in the backseat, we were on the road to St. George.  We stopped in Nephi for dinner, then got to St. George about 8:30 or so that night.  Desert Solace is just off the highway that goes north out of St. George, and we eventually found it. We drove down the long gravel driveway, and walked in the front door. I was still sort of in daze, but remember sitting in the living room of this sprawling house, after meeting Mark and his wife Jerri, while Vicky and Marilyn counted out the cash I had taken to Vegas to pay for my stay there.
There were some papers to sign, I met the other four clients that were there at the time, I gave up my car keys, wallet, and phone, and found myself in a room in the basement that I was sharing with Greg, another client.
As I lay in bed that night, on my side, wide awake staring out the doorway at the eerie pink wall in the hallway, illuminated by the exit sign at the end of it, I thought to myself "What have I done?" "How did I get here?"  It was so weird.  So surreal.  I had no idea what was going to happen, and I had no clue that my life would really begin the next day.  I only knew I was sick, I needed help, and this was my chance.  I had better not blow it...