Anorexia Kills

For whatever reason, I feel the need to preface this post with a declaration that I do not buy the Daily Mail. Finding it, all too often, a thinly veiled excuse to propound nationalistic views, I frequently have to remind readers that the world is not really that bad a place unless they believe all they read in this trussed up tabloid.

I was, however, drawn to the full page article about a long suffering mother, who, five years after her daughter’s tragic death, has made the decision to release the girl’s diaries. Diaries that record the tortured journey of Loredana Verta, a bright, talented sixteen year old, who was dead within three years. Heart attack.

Rightly or wrongly, some of  this young sufferer’s innermost thoughts and feelings are laid bare in newsprint for all to see.

The workings of this girl’s mind are utterly consumed by the illness. Her writing is littered with scribbled self loathing, capitalised screams of  “I HATE ME… I HATE MY BODY”.   Most teenagers feels like this at some point. Hormones, skin, peer pressure, perfection culture, fashion… It’s all there to taunt the aspiring, spot laden, hormone raging teen.

Except Loredana’s thoughts are all centred on weight loss and weight gain and wrongly perceived fat.
To my mind, what is more haunting than the poisonous self hatred, the desperation, the pleas to God and the cries for help, are the words of a grieving mother, who says,

“Lorry thought she could live with the condition – that as long as she was thin, she would be OK. She didn’t realise that anorexia is a deadly disease. It is a killer”.*

For long term sufferers, ‘old hands’,
 Anorexia can be so ingrained, so deeply habitual, that we forget that it is something UNnatural… an invasion. It becomes like Stockholm Syndrome… It’s is our natural fall back position.

It KILLS.
Let’s get real.
It is deadly.

We think it won’t ever happen to us, and yet, why wouldn’t it? It killed Loredana in just THREE years.

Of all psychiatric disorders, Anorexia is the biggest killer. TWENTY PERCENT of sufferers die prematurely.^

I hear my wake up call.

Can you hear yours?

* Emphasis is mine
^ Statistics according to B-EAT

Groundhog: Eat My Heart Out

The cycle of change seems perpetual and impossible to break out of.. The whispering of the Anorexia is so much louder than the voice of reason and recovery. The stupidest thing is that I fall for it time and time again. After years of the same tiresome thoughts and feelings; years of the illness telling me that I am piling on the pounds; that I am 'out of control' and that I look 'normal', I am STILL shocked when the scales disprove it. I am STILL more surprised by the hard facts, figures that plainly contradict the lies. 

Benefits - As IF.

      6 years ago I was a valued colleague. 
I had a good career, bright prospects and a good wage. 
I had a pension. Good holidays. 
I was contributing to society. 
I was teaching English and social skills to young, disaffected teenagers who were so often in need of firm boundaries; steady, fair reliable adults who could help to rebuild some of the trust and respect that they lacked. 
I was passionate, respected, consulted. 

      How is it then, that 6 years on, this same young woman sits with her support worker, filling in a form for Disability Living Allowance?
How did she go from the shiny, high gloss teacher to the redundant, matt -finish patient?

      The change was staged, steady. I was stripped, planed, sanded and my identity fell away... disintegrated, replaced by the illness...  
Suddenly, I'm not 'a Teacher' anymore. ("Hi! I'm a teacher too! What do you teach? Me? Oh I do Key Stage 3 and 4 English"). 
Not anymore. 
Now I'm: 'an Anorexic'. 

      I  don't have an income. I've lost my career. I don't have holidays.
Days slip past me. I am overwhelmed by small things. Most days end without ceremony. I have achieved nothing. Thousands of hours and nothing to show. 

      Overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of what this section of the form seemed to demand, I left it blank.
And so my Support Worker wrote a few clinical / medical comments.

My claim for benefit will be submitted today. 

But really...

...benefits..? 

I'm trying so hard to see anything that would justify the use that word.

Eating Disorders Awareness - One Truth About Anorexia

I'm conscious that it's National Eating Disorders Week. 
I'm also conscious that much of my writing here has borne witness to my own, very personal, struggle with Anorexia and that, whilst there are many apparent similarities between sufferers, each and every person has their own 'strain' of the illness. 
I recently watched a BBC documentary by a now recovered minor celeb who, having suffered from Anorexia in her youth, embarked upon a quest to find out 'The Truth about Anorexia'. I watched with a  degree of cynicism, (typical of me) because the results of this exploration were pretty obvious from the outset. 

(Aside) As it happened, I was more intrigued the next day, by the widespread and vicious backlash on various discussion forums, where anorexics ripped the programme, and its celebrity 'investigator', to shreds, claiming that she obviously hadn't been a 'proper' anorexic! 
That would be another topic!

One thing that I've learned from the large number of patients in the treatment centres I've been in, is that there IS no single 'cause' of anorexia. There can be no 'getting to the bottom of it' because it's as shape shifting as the virus for the common cold.  

You think you can spot an anorexic? It's the legs that give it away right? The two pins that, by some miracle, are holding them up. And the face. The way their eyes sink into the skull, dark skin sagging at the ridge of bone which runs from the top of their cheek to the deep line around the mouth.
The clothes that hang baggy off their shoulders. Tired, tiny arms, narrowed, fleshless at the tops. 
Yep. Definitely.
As I type, I sit in Cafe Nero. Couples sit sipping valentines coffee. A barrista sweeps conscientiously, moving the easel with the 'Hot Soup' ad, concentrating on each swish across the tiled floor. A young man sits at his laptop, looking over dark glasses at intervals. 
I'm drinking a one shot Americano with skimmed milk, hot. My make up is immaculate (last time I checked anyway). Subtle grey eyeshadow, a touch of mascara, a little blush. I'm about seven stone; that's forty five kilos to the metric crowd. My clothes are an eight. I've just eaten a Kit Kat. 
Nobody knows I'm anorexic. 
Nobody can see that beneath the recently acquired flesh, a cold skeleton howls, like a forgotten child. Nobody can hear the whispers, the taunting desire to have one of the brownies that the rosy-glow girl to my right is enjoying. Nobody can see the rapid calculations, the figures flicking up and down as I add, divide, add, multiply; 107 calories = my biscuit, 100ml of skimmed milk =  43Kcals x 2 plus a bite of cereal bar. It's too much. How can I compensate at dinner? 
Nobody sees the anorexic who knocks around in a body too large.
I may be sitting near another at this very moment.

I think I've digressed somewhere. 
I set out to illustrate the fact that the one truth about Anorexia I know is that everyone's illness is different.

During inpatient treatment people presented with dangerously low BMIs. But how they got to that point varied. 
Okay, we all have an issue with food. But some anorexics are calorie obsessed, whilst others are more preoccupied with the fat content in foods. 
Some are addicted to exercise (myself included) and can hardly sit down for more than ten minutes without having to get up and do press ups or squats; others can happily lie on a sofa for hours and sleep. 
Some patients have buggered up their system by taking laxatives and/or making themselves sick. Others won't take a tablet, even for a migraine.
Some quake at the sight of a potato because carbs are sworn enemies, others are too afraid to eat a carrot because it has somehow become a 'fear food'. Still more are terrified of dairy products, not touching milk or cheese for years.
I met patients who will 'water load' to throw their weight (water loading is a common but dangerous behaviour practised by eating disordered patients who consume vast quantities of water in order to fake weight gain). Then again, some people are so obsessed with knowing their actual weight that they will wear exactly the same clothes to be weighed. 
Some anorexics are so scared that their body will absorb fat that they won't use cream shower gels or moisturiser on their skin. 
I've met anorexics who drink copious amounts of alcohol, whilst others won't even sniff it.
When I was at my worst, I couldn't drink coffee for fear that it contained hidden calories. I couldn't trust the calorie content on certain labels and so I ruled out anything which I deemed to have 'too few calories to be believed'.
Some people can't watch food programmes, others read cookbooks obsessively and liked nothing better than to cook a three course meal that they could never eat.

Eating Disorders may present similarly, but no one sufferer has the illness in quite the same way, which may be why they are so difficult to treat and why they are still so widely misunderstood.