by Cyn Bagley

Created on: April 12, 2008   Last Updated: November 28, 2011

Being fit, exercising every day, and eating the right foods, does not guarantee a long life. Before my illness with a Vasculitis disease, I walked three to five miles every other day. I was careful of my salt intake. I took a multivitamin and I ate a balanced diet of vegetables and protein. I was lean and I was healthy.

My life was filled with responsibility, education, and independence. I had learned many years before that being in good physical shape did not guarantee a long life. At the Navy training base in Pensacola, Florida, a thirty-two year old runner died from a heart attack as he was running his usual ten miles a day. He forgot that he needed to be acclimatized before he did heavy exercise in the Florida sun. Healthy is the default setting not the guarantee.

When I reached the age of forty-one, I thought that I caught a stomach flu. But it didn't go away. I vomited every four hours for two weeks. When I went to the ER, the ER doctors suggested that I had a mental problem. But, what was really happening was I was losing my kidneys.

I knew something was wrong. I went to my primary care doctor. I went to the ER again. Finally, a day that I was being supported by my husband (I could barely stand), my primary care physician ran through the hospital (Landstuhl military hospital in Germany), looking for me. He put me in a wheelchair, brought me to his office, and spent the next few hours trying to get me admitted to the I.C.U.

Beyond Fitness

Beyond the fitness of my body, I had a mental toughness that was not apparent to the people around me. I was the oldest of nine children. My parents took me out of school when I was thirteen to be home schooled. I spent the rest of my teen years teaching my siblings how to read, housekeeping, babysitting, and cooking. I did not have a teen hood. How did I survive? I looked to the future. I knew that if I survived the fighting, the religion, the servitude that when I became an adult I could make my own life-my own paradise.

I used this attitude during the worst part of my illness.

When I was in the I.C.U. connected to a catheter and I.V., I refused to die. Simple. Straightforward. Yes?

No, it was not simple. I held on with my nails. I talked to my nurse. I talked to my husband. I refused to watch T.V. I blinked my eyes, gritted my teeth, and kept breathing. I refused to give up even when the head nurse strolled into my room and told my that I was dying and that I should prepare a will.

I put all of my work into moving the joints of my toes. I would listen to the beeps of the machines and breath. I made myself live.

A few years ago I met someone online who used to teach survival techniques to policemen. He said that the most important lesson that they had to learn was to "not give up." He said that many of them died after a gunshot wound because they did not have the will to live even when they had not been hit in a vital area. The "not give up" attitude was important even when the wounds were not fatal.

So beyond fitness, beyond health is the "will to live." Do you have the attitude to live your dreams? Do you have the will to live?

It takes nails, guts, and pain. It takes all you can give, and then takes more. It means that when you have pain, not a little toe-bashing pain, but pain that is a ten on the doctor's scale - when you have pain, you do NOT give in.

So after five years, no almost nine years, of treatment, medication, and pain, I am in remission. It doesn't mean that I won't go through it again, it just means that for a little while I have beat it.

So, can you?

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