'I Chose Life' | Lost Maui Hiker Amanda Eller Reflects On Her 17-Day Fight For Survival
(CBS News) -- A yoga teacher who survived 17 days in a Hawaiian forest is back home with her family. More than two weeks ago, 35-year-old Maryland native Amanda Eller set out for what was supposed to be a three-mile jog. Instead, it turned into a fight for survival.
"The last 17 days of my life have been the toughest days of my life," Eller said from her hospital bed where she's recovering from a broken shinbone and a skin infection on her legs. "It did come down to life and death and I had to choose and I chose life. I wasn't going to take the easy way out."
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Eller was discovered miles from where she started hiking in Maui's Makawao Forest Reserve, after friends and family launched their own search. Her survival is all the more incredible when you consider she had no cellphone and was only wearing yoga pants and a tank top when she went missing.