The following comes from The Town Talk:
Daniel Brooks of Alexandria was desperate. He couldn't take the pain any longer and he wanted to die.
Little did he know that a 19th century priest from New Orleans would have a hand in his healing.
Brooks, 58, had been through 16 surgeries in three different cities since his motorcycle accident in 1986.
"A truck hit me and knocked me into a telephone pole on Horseshoe Drive," he said of the accident that led to six spinal surgeries, five abdominal surgeries, two hips surgeries and three for the thighbone. Some surgeries were in Alexandria; others were in New Orleans and Houston.
All that led him to start taking pain pills — hard narcotics. "I got addicted," he said, "with one surgery after another."
He tried quitting the drugs, but was always overwhelmed by either the pain or the withdrawal symptoms — including nausea and diarrhea.
His worst pain, he said, was from a ruptured disc, a pinched nerve and a broken C7 vertebrae. "Very, very sharp — like being stabbed with needles deep inside me," he said. "I couldn't turn my head. I have a titanium plate in my neck, and I've had three cervical fusions and four lumbar fusions.
"I prayed and prayed and couldn't get relief," he continued.
One day last November he was desperate to be rid of the pain — pain that plagued him for so many years and had become unbearable in recent weeks.
"I prayed harder than I have ever prayed that I could go to sleep and die," he said, noting he did go to sleep and then had a profound dream.
In his dream, he explained, he went to a Mass at St. Frances Cabrini Church with his oldest son, Daniel Jr., and his family, and they were the only ones there besides the Rev. Chad Partain, the church pastor.
"Father Chad wanted me to go to confession," he said, continuing to discuss his dream, "and after he gave me absolution, I told him all about my problem, that I was hopelessly addicted to strong narcotics for 3-5 years and couldn't take it anymore. I said you are a Roman Catholic priest and you have the power to forgive and the power to 'bind and loose' (Matthew 18:18), and you have the power to break this narcotics passion within me. I'm asking you to pray for me."
As the dream continued, Partain came out from the confessional and laid a hand on Brooks' head and said prayers and then told him to go home and pray a 9-hour novena every hour on the hour to Blessed Father Seelos. If he did, Partain assured him in the dream, "You will get what you ask for."
Soon after Brooks woke up, he was agitated by the dream and called his oldest son and told him about it.
"Because he had been in so much pain for two weeks and struggling with withdrawals, I thought it was pretty sensational," Daniel Brooks Jr. said. "But I figured if it was from God, he would delivered from the withdrawals and (his severe pain)."
So Daniel Jr. encouraged his father to do as Partain told him to do in the dream. Brooks did so — immediately.
He held a rosary in his hands as he told his story. Above a nearby door, a small painting of the Sacred Heart of Jesus looked down on all in his living room.
He said he had never heard of Blessed Father Francis Xavier Seelos before the dream, but after receiving encouragement from his son to say the prayer, he immediately started a novena to Seelos in his own words.
"After my final prayer following the ninth hour, I felt a warmth on the back of my neck and was content and happy inside," Brooks said. "I took my pills and flushed them down the commode, just trusting in God. I went to bed and fell asleep, and slept all night, which I never do. I woke up the next morning feeling great.
