I will never forget their desire to be there or their unwavering kindness and support for both my family and me.

I spent the next couple of weeks on heavy-duty antibiotics and slowly began to stabilize. I was still considered critical, but not nearly as critical as I had been in the weeks leading up to the second surgery. Being kept on the critical list had its advantages, though. The biggest one was that I could still receive around-the-clock care. If my condition had been downgraded, I wouldn't have had the same kind of monitoring.

Dr. Barry Molk continued to come by daily, encouraging me to fight the good fight.

"You've got a lot of staph left in you, Dave, which means you've got a long road ahead and I needthrough the windows in daytime, but it quickly disappears at one o'clock in the morning when no one else is around and unimaginable terror starts to seep into the dark places of your mind. Even with Junior in the room, my dreams often turned to nightmares that seemed so real I felt all alone.

At some point, one of the drugs they were giving me really started to affect my mental state. As a result, I began having extraordinary hallucinations. They started when I was in the ICU and continued throughout my stay at Craig Hospital. They only came at night—never during the day.

Prior to getting sick, I'd heard all sorts of stories about guys who go into rehab and during their withdrawal, hallucinate all kinds of crazy stuff,