WHEN I asked readers re- cently to tell me about their most memorable getaways, it didn't take Stephanie DeNicola long to shoot me back her answer.

The response of the 32-year-old Charlottesville resident who works in Culpeper--which I'm sharing today to encourage you "getaways" stragglers to get on stick--was a poignant tale of an especially meaningful trip to Bermuda.

The pivotal moment?

It came after she had completed walking in a half-marathon, and was sitting on the beach with her toes in the sand, enjoying the sunset.

"It was at that moment that I realized how much I had defied the odds," she said. "I sent a postcard to the rheumatologist who had told me I should go on disability, with the simple note--'Nothing is impossible.'"

She said the beautiful Bermuda is her favorite spot "not just for the wonder of the island, but because of how far I had come to get there. And I'm not talking about geography."

A Queens, N.Y., native, DeNicola was at Mansfield University in Pennsylvania in the fall of 1999 when she got an eye infection that seemed like a routine case of pink eye.

She didn't initially link it to the morning not long after when she woke up unable to move anything on the left side of her body.

"It took 13 doctors more than two months to diagnose me with severe rheumatoid arthritis," she said. "I was told I would be on disability within a few years. My rheumatologist ended up recommending that just a few months later."

Not happy with the treatment recommended by initial doctors, the steroids and bed rest that saw her balloon from a size 4 to a size 18--DeNicola pushed for another approach.

"After much begging and pleading, I tried several drugs that were new at the time and very expensive," she said, including a drug taken intravenously called Remicade, which drastically improved her symptoms.

She moved to Virginia for a new job and a year later, a new rheumatologist joked that the drug had worked so well for her that she should run a marathon.