Courage and Chronic Illness

Cowardly Lion

By Cyn Bagley and Foto-AI art 2023

What is courage?

I have always thought that courage was mainly on the battlefield such as WWII. I heard the stories of soldiers, dumping their rations to carry enough bullets to survive and hoping to scavenge what they needed to eat from the countryside and farms.

I heard the stories where men were so frightened, but they continued with one step before the other. What kept them on that battlefield was theirbrothers-at-arms who were also going one step at a time.

Some of them got hardened to the fear and others succumbed to it.

I have been told that I have courage because I have survived and even thrived with a dangerous chronic illness. The auto-immune diseases are all dangerous, but the one that triggered like a bomb in my body was particularly quick and lethal if not treated.

They told me it could have boiled in my system for years before it finally burst forth—full blown. I also had the “end” symptoms because my kidneys failed— both of them. The blood going to the kidneys was constricted and finally stopped by the inflammation in the blood vessels feeding them.

It took the doctors two weeks from the time I almost died in the hospital to diagnose me. They kept me alive with dialysis and blood transfusions. I held on by my toes and fingernails. The pain was incredible since the kidneys weren’t working, the toxins had to go somewhere and they went into every joint of my body.

I say again, the pain was incredible. It was in my toes, my hands, my knees, my hips, and my spine.

So I have been called courageous.

Why? Because I held on one more day? Because I narrowed my focus to each minute and didn’t look to the future? I feel like a fraud every time someone says I have courage.

I do have tenacity. I was not going to leave my husband like that. It would have crushed him. I knew it. So I held on. Also I hadn’t finished my purpose yet. I wanted to write stories, poems, and other things.

I WAS NOT FINISHED.

You see, I don’t believe I was courageous because there was a selfish motive there. BUT I am a survivor. More than that— I thrive if I must. Maybe a sickly flower on a rocky crag, but I still live.

Near the end of the kidney dialysis journey, I knew my dog was dying. She pulled me through the death of my husband from cancer. She pulled me through the worst grief I have ever experienced. I still miss him.

I was asked by my brother if I would have accepted the kidney if Foxy had died before the transplant. I said no. Why? because I couldn’t see a future without a companion. She had been my companion for 9 years and at that point. If she had gone, I would have decided I had lived my life to its end.

That is the promise I gave my late-hubby, that I would live my life to its end.

So I did accept the kidney. Foxy died two months later.

She was much older than I thought and she stayed with me as long as she could. She is the one with courage, not me.

So I think of those who had courage in my life. It makes me go one more step, one more hour, and one more day.

I see a future now.