Why?

I have been considering this for some time - why?  Why am I doing this?  Why am I still doing this after so much time?  What is my reason for being on this program or any other program?  I was stumped on how to identify this.  Then I started looking back at some really old writings, from back when I started, and found it again.

Six and 1/2 years ago, I was 300 lbs. and in the hospital with a nasty case of cellulitis up my whole left leg.  I was only in for 4 days, but it took weeks and months to actually recover.  (Side note:  I have a good friend who was hospitalized on April 3 with a case that was not as serious as mine upon presentation, but she is STILL not home, some 4+ months later.  I didn't realize how serious this can be.)  I was weak, sick, fat, alone 3000 miles away from my family and very depressed.  While lying in my hospital bed, though, I had a lot of time to think.  About where I was, why I was there, what was going on in my life, etc.  After being released and finding out that I would not be feeling well for quite some time, that recovery would be counted in weeks, not days, I was slapped in the face with my own mortality.

At the time, I was 54 years old, almost 55.  But this illness was not enough to make me do anything about my health.  But it was enough to make me think.  And my thoughts turned to my mother.  After the age of 60, my mother developed heart problems, had a heart attack, developed Crohn's disease, had a pacemaker/defibrillator implanted and eventually developed Type 2 Diabetes.  But she would not do anything about it for herself.  Rather, she would sit in her chair expecting to be waited on and deteriorating.  She had a definite princess complex, and my Dad went along with it.  I decided that, even though I may still become victim of these things, I was not going to sit on the couch and wait for it to happen.  I was going to give Disease and Death a moving target.  So I joined Weight Watchers, and over the course of 2 years, lost 113 lbs.  I joined a gym.  I bought a bicycle and rode it. I walked.  I took up yoga.

Then 3 1/2 years ago, my always thin, healthy active Dad went in for a "routine" stent placement, and the thing blew up in his heart.  He was without a pulse for more than 30 seconds, had a couple of heart attacks and a stroke.  He, too, wound up with a pacemaker/defibrillator implanted.  I left my career of 25+ years and came home to be their caretaker.

Over the course of the next year or so, I suffered a severe identity crisis.  I was also hospitalized, again, with cellulitis.  And, again, was in the hospital for Christmas.  I gained back half of the weight that I had lost, even though I was still going to Weight Watchers.  I was still strong, active, going to the gym every day, eating clean most of the time, but I ate too much.  And I lost my grasp on why I had started this journey in the first place.

I know I made a short story long, but getting back to my why.  I am not running FROM disease and death.  But I look at the choices my mother made and what the results were.  I look at the fact that she refused to do anything for herself until she got so bad that she could no longer do it if she tried.  I watched her mentally deteriorate from repeated strokes due to badly controlled Diabetes that eventually left her paralyzed on one side, unable to speak and with difficulty swallowing.  And it makes me angry that she wouldn't fight for herself. I watched my fiance give in to depression and disease waiting for a magic pill to make him all better, refusing to fight for himself until he no longer could.  So he committed suicide.  And it makes me angry.  I see my Dad struggle with failing health and dementia, even though he did everything right (ate right, low blood pressure, retired after the age of 70, avid reader, crossword puzzle aficionado, played bridge, walked every day, etc).  He has survived 3 separate unrelated cancers.  And this, too, makes me angry.

But it spurs me on. I know that these things could be waiting for me, too.  This is my genetic history, and I am 61 years old.  But I don't have to just accept it. And this is my WHY.

I refuse to be a sitting target for Death and Disease.  I refuse to wait for them to get to me.  If they want me, they are going to have to move quickly because I don't sit still for long.  I will do everything I can, whatever is up to me, so that I can avoid or at the least postpone the illnesses that have befallen my parents.  I will fight for myself, for my life, because it matters.  My mother mattered.  My fiance mattered.  My father matters.  Nothing that I could ever put into my mouth can ever be as important as this.  I will fight because I matter!

So, what is your WHY?