>>> http://www.ukiahdailyjournal.com/Stories/0,1413,91~3089~2931549,00.html
>>>
>>> The Comeback Kid
>>> From riches to rags to recovery
>>> By Tony Anthony
>>> For the Daily Journal
>>>
>>> Michael Daugherty says that his step-daughter Katie, was the best
>>> teacher he ever had.
>>>
>>> This is why.
>>>
>>> In November of 2001, doctors said that she wouldn't live to see
>>> Thanksgiving.
>>>
>>> "She lived until September 2004. What a gift Katie was!"
>>>
>>> Michael looks at you with clear blue eyes that have learned a lot over
>>> the course of his life. On August 20 of last year Michael was diagnosed
>>> with metastatic cancer of the prostate.
>>>
>>> "Doctors told me I had six months to live."
>>>
>>> But Michael had learned from the years of taking care of Katie, that
>>> what people tell you, even doctors, isn't necessarily the truth.
>>>
>>> "I practiced being underwhelmed,'" Michael says with a smile. "It is not
>>> up to the doctors to decide when I'm going to check out' - I'm going to
>>> check out when it's God's time."
>>>
>>> Michael's words are not idle thoughts - he believes in what he says.
>>> Last September, after his mother died on Sept. 4 and Katie passed on the
>>> 11th, his wife Mary was so upset that he booked a cruise for them to
>>> Hawaii for this coming August.
>>>
>>> "I did it to make a point," he says. "When I didn't even buy
>>> cancellation insurance, then she believed me!"
>>>
>>> Michael Daugherty was born on October 16, 1945 in Oakland.
>>>
>>> The eldest in a family of 10 children, he grew up in one of the most
>>> impoverished sections of the city.
>>>
>>> "My most vivid childhood memories are of eating oatmeal with powdered
>>> milk, broken plastered ceilings and walls, backed-up plumbing and the
>>> putrid stench of regurgitated wine. I wore clothes that were too big and
>>> shoes that were too small and received daily beatings from an
>>> ill-tempered father who referred to me only as stupid!'"
>>>
>>> Michael first ran away from home at the age of 6, a pattern that
>>> continued throughout his childhood. He was only 10 years old the first
>>> time he went to juvenile hall. By the time he was 14 he had been sent to
>>> jail a half dozen times for running away.
>>>
>>> Starting a career at 14, when most kids were enjoying summer fun as a
>>> young teenager, Michael was put to work full-time in his father's
>>> tool-making business. He recalls his father telling him, "today you are
>>> a man and as such you can drink and you can smoke. The beer's in the
>>> refrigerator, the hard stuff is in the office." At only 14 Michael was
>>> already navigating two adult paths: learning a trade and learning how to
>>> drink - something that would end up ruling his life for years.
>>>
>>> In 1966, fresh out of the Army, Michael married his first wife Jean.
>>> Within three years they had two beautiful children - Patsy and Jeff. By
>>> this time Michael had become a successful tool maker. Frequently
>>> engineers in the company he worked for would come to him with plans for
>>> an elaborate tool saying, "wait until after lunch before you make this -
>>> it's got to be perfect!"
>>>
>>> Michael says, "everyone knew I drank a lot, but my employer felt it was
>>> a small price to pay for the elaborate tooling I could produce when my
>>> hands were steady. My drinking had escalated to a point where I was more
>>> proficient drunk than sober."
>>>
>>> In 1974, while working for Lockheed Aerospace, Michael was offered a
>>> high-paying job at Hewlett Packard in Santa Rosa.
>>>
>>> "My wife and I moved into a large house in Bennett Valley with a
>>> swimming pool, a Jacuzzi and all the creature comforts. My wife was
>>> having the same problems with alcohol as me, and the problem was that we
>>> brought our addictions along with us to Santa Rosa. Our marriage was
>>> deteriorating; we argued constantly, both of us blaming the other for
>>> the way we felt. We ended up divorcing. My wife moved out taking the
>>> children and most of our possessions along with her."
>>>
>>> Drink takes over - life becomes a nightmarish blur.
>>>
>>> "I quit my job, devastated, cashed in my retirement benefits and went
>>> through $35,000 in six months. When I left Santa Rosa I was broke and
>>> drinking incessantly."
>>>
>>> Michael went through a series of jobs in his trade and always ended up
>>> being fired for incompetence. Drinking had brought him to the point
>>> where he was no longer mentally or physically capable of even seeking
>>> employment.
>>>
>>> "The next two years were a nightmarish blur," he says. "I had no car, no
>>> place to live, no friends. I was rejected by my family and shunned by
>>> strangers."
>>>
>>> The man who had lived in an expensive house in an expensive neighborhood
>>> now found himself sleeping in doorways and panhandling on the streets
>>> for money to buy cheap bottles of wine.
>>>
>>> "I got my food out of dumpsters behind fast food places."
>>>
>>> Michael Daugherty finally had hit bottom.
>>>
>>> When even his attempts at suicide had failed he awakened in the
>>> Intensive Care Unit at Kaiser Hospital in San Rafael full of tubes and
>>> tied to a hospital bed after six days in a coma.
>>>
>>> The Comeback Kid'
>>>
>>> "On February 2, 1986 I took my last drink," Michael says, "I can't
>>> explain the decision. Let me just say that the decision not to drink or
>>> use drugs again came to me as a direct result of an intervention by a
>>> power much greater than myself. With that experience, in a flash of
>>> light, my sanity was restored. I was able to see the sick and pitiful
>>> drunk I had become."
>>>
>>> That same day, Michael left the streets of Hayward, took a bus to
>>> Healdsburg where he attended his first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.
>>> He has not had a drink or used a drug since. This February, Michael
>>> celebrated 19 years of sobriety.
>>>
>>> "During my first year of sobriety I was incapable of almost any type of
>>> physical or mental activity. Had it not been for the help of a very dear
>>> friend who gave me a place to stay, I doubt if I would have ever gotten
>>> through it. I was unable to even complete a thought in conversation. I
>>> forgot words in mid-sentence."
>>>
>>> During that year Michael was repeatedly turned down for jobs. Once, when
>>> he tried to demonstrate his abilities as a machinist, he broke the
>>> machine. Finally, he sought help in the California Vocational
>>> Rehabilitation Program where he was tested and told that he would most
>>> likely never be successful at any mentally demanding work.
>>>
>>> "They told me, essentially, that the cheese had slid off the cracker,"
>>> he laughs.
>>>
>>> But Michael was not one to be kept down long. After starting his own
>>> carpet cleaning business he knew he had to give something back. Every
>>> night of the week he would pick up recovering alcoholics from local
>>> institutions and bring them to AA meetings. Eventually, he became a
>>> coordinator for AA Hospitals and Institutions for Sonoma County. He
>>> ended up sponsoring 31 people in the program and was in demand as a
>>> speaker.
>>>
>>> "That, in itself, was a major miracle," he admits. "I had always been
>>> petrified to speak in front of large audiences.
>>>
>>> "What enabled me to speak was not courage," he says humbly, "but
>>> compassion."
>>>
>>> Michael credits his ability to help others to a heart-felt empathy and
>>> love for those who are still struggling with sobriety.
>>>
>>> "It is just the very same love that was given to me. I never forget what
>>> it was like to live without hope or how empty it feels to be destined to
>>> die without dignity."
>>>
>>> In December of 1989 Michael became very ill with a fungal infection. It
>>> turned out that the halfway house he was in had been built over an old
>>> well.
>>>
>>> "Because I am an asthmatic and allergic to mildew and fungus, the fungus
>>> was allowed to grow uncontested. It had turned into emphysema and
>>> claimed 42 percent of my lungs."
>>>
>>> In March of 1990, when Michael was released from the hospital, because
>>> of health concerns he could not go back to his carpet cleaning business
>>> nor work as a toolmaker because of the dust and chemicals. Sitting on
>>> the examination table, Michael asked the doctor, "what about working in
>>> a hospital?"
>>>
>>> At that moment another doctor put an X-ray up to the light box.
>>>
>>> "That's what I'll do!" He thought, "I'll learn to take X-rays."
>>>
>>> And thus began Michael's career in radiology. He graduated from school
>>> as a radiologic technologist on his birthday October 16, 1993 and
>>> secured a job at Healdsburg Hospital. His new career was just beginning,
>>> but his greatest lessons in life were still to come.
>>>
>>> Michael's greatest teacher
>>>
>>> Michael Married Mary Johnson, a nurse at Healdsburg Hospital, in 1997.
>>> The couple moved to Lakeport in 1999 along with Mary's three children,
>>> which included her daughter Katie Madeline Johnson who was under "total
>>> care" with Ehlers Danlos a connective tissue disease.
>>>
>>> Michael says, "Katie couldn't talk or walk. Everything had to be done
>>> for her. She needed complete care all day long. I learned to play the
>>> guitar so I could sit with her and sing and play here to sleep. The
>>> first song I wrote was for her.
>>>
>>> "Katie was the best spiritual teacher I ever had. She taught me how to
>>> accept life on life's terms. The last verse in my song was, She's got a
>>> great disposition in spite of all her troubles and woes, and with each
>>> passing day, my admiration of her grows.'"
>>>
>>> Practice being underwhelmed'
>>>
>>> In November of 2001, doctors told Mary and Michael that Katie wouldn't
>>> live to see Thanksgiving. That's when Michael took over as her primary
>>> care giver. She lived until September 11, 2004.
>>>
>>> "That was the lesson Katie taught me."
>>>
>>> It was a lesson he would need to apply to his own life.
>>>
>>> "Just a few weeks before Katie died I was diagnosed with prostate cancer
>>> and that the cancer had metastasized. The doctors told me, best case
>>> scenario, I had six months to live.
>>>
>>> "So this is when I decided to practice what I call being underwhelmed.'
>>> I applied my philosophy for staying sober to the cancer. What has always
>>> worked for me is to do what's in front of me with love in my heart and
>>> then get out of God's way and let the chips fall where they may."
>>>
>>> The doctors first told Michael the cancer couldn't be treated. But he
>>> wasn't about to give up.
>>>
>>> "I asked for the name of the best doctor in the country. I found out he
>>> was at UCSF and he turned out to be the one who gave me a way out. I was
>>> sent to Ukiah for treatments to blast my pelvis.'"
>>>
>>> And then, Michael did, as he does with anything he has to deal with, "I
>>> let it go - I gave it to God."
>>>
>>> What sums up Michael's view of life is something called "The Third Step
>>> Prayer."
>>>
>>> "It's what inspires me and it goes like this: Father, I offer myself to
>>> Thee, to build with me and do with me whatever Thou wilt. Relieve me of
>>> the bondage of self that I may better do Thy will. Take away my
>>> difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would
>>> help. Of Thy power, Thy love and Thy way of life. May I do Thy will
>>> always.'
>>>
>>> "It takes infinite trust and faith in God to let everything happen the
>>> way it's going to. But as long as I do everything with love in my heart,
>>> that's the best I can do."
>>>
>>> Michael's eyes sparkle when he says, "whatever is going to happen is
>>> going to happen and it's OK. In the end, it's not all about me - it's
>>> much bigger than that, if you know what I mean."
>>>
>>> Today Daugherty lives in Lakeport and spends much of his time in Ukiah
>>> getting radiation therapy and attending to his recovery.
>>