4-24-13

I am pleased to announce that I am happy with my new Doctor. She seems genuinely interested in me and she actually seems like she knows what she is doing. I was definitely relatively surprised because as soon as I walked into her office she told me to put my bag down, and then she got my height, weight, and vitals. That’s an eating disorder specialist for you. Hah. I just was not expecting it because I think I have been down playing the impact that the eating disorder still has in my life. I am not underweight at the moment, but food, weight, and intrusive body image thoughts still harass me all day long. And that’s something that some people don’t understand- just because someone isn’t malnourished doesn’t mean they are not fighting an eating disorder from hell.

 I definitely appreciate the growing number of comments I have been getting about my little blog and all the encouraging words. It is for my followers and the people who read my blog that I keep writing anyway~

So its mid-September 2006 and I have been in the Pediatric Emergency room of the Johns Hopkins Hospital doing squats, in order to raise my heart rate. Goal accomplished. The ER physician confirms with the eating disorder unit that it’s time for me to come up. It was a pretty long walk. Johns Hopkins Hospital is an absolutely outstandingly huge hospital. The “Meyer Neuropsychiatric Building”, alone has 7 floors. It would be the 4^th floor that I would reside for almost 3 months, fighting a battle within myself and with all the professionals trying to save my life. As soon as I arrived on the unit I skeptical; this unit looked nothing like Sheppard Pratt. It looked like a hospital unit. The eating disorder unit (Meyer 4) was also shared with the “mood disorder” program, also known as people with Depressive Disorders, Bipolar Disorder, and even a mix of other things. I also some patients I had been with at Sheppard Pratt not 3 weeks previous…

This unit was different than Sheppard Pratt in almost every way. The nurses and mental health workers at Sheppard Pratt wore scrubs, and the Psychiatrists just wore regular professional cloths. At Johns Hopkins everyone wore lab coats. There were also a lot more than just nurses and psychiatrists. Johns Hopkins is a large University Medical School and teaching Hospital; so on the unit during the day there were nurses’ aides, nurses, nursing students, medical students, Psychiatry Residents, Social Workers, Social Work interns, Attending Physicians, and at the top of the food chain (No pun intended) at Johns Hopkins was the Director of the Eating Disorder Program, she was also an attending Physician. If imaginable the director of this program made it even more challenging and unbearable (for me) than even the program at Sheppard Pratt. My first few hours at Johns Hopkins were pretty standard, I ate lunch (and I did so without a fuss). I realized at lunch that things were much different than Sheppard Pratt. There were only about 9 inpatient eating disorder patients at any given time as compared to over 20. The “Day Hospital” had a similar number. I will talk more about the day hospital later. I am going to give some more background information about the program. Johns Hopkins did everything as a “team”. Every morning there was “rounds”, which meant the fragile and vulnerable eating disorder patients went into a room of monsters, I mean, Psychiatrists, Social Workers, Medical Students, Residents, Occupational Therapists, Dieticians, and more. Here the patient would get drilled about any “behavior”, they were engaging in. It was also in this room that patients were told there meal plan was being moved up.

 

I was assigned a personal nurse my first day, and I still had my IV in from the Emergency Room and it hurt. After a couple of hours the nurse finally took it out. One of the Residents took me into the exam room and did my initial exam just to make sure I wasn’t falling apart (although I had just come from the ER -_-). The unit was broken up into 4 separate “alcoves” with 2 bathrooms for 3-4 rooms. I was assigned a private room for a little while because I had to wear a pulse ox at night. Back in 2006 the floors were tile they may have put carpet down now, but I was in my room the first night and I was putting my hospital socks on and as I stood up I just slipped and fell. I don’t remember if I ended up hitting my leg or my arm but I know I had a small bruise and I tore the skin. I just started to cry I felt so pathetic and confused. I went and told my nurse and they had to report to it to the “Resident on Call”, well of course everyone had a minor freak out. If I hadn’t of looked like hell I don’t think it would have mattered but they probably thought I broke something. I assured them it didn’t hurt that bad. The Resident who just so happened to be still on the unit put a bandage on me and said they will have to keep an “eye” on me. I remember reading my bible that night just out of pure terror of thinking I might die. I never died though.

The first couple days I thought things were actually going pretty well. But as soon as I started gaining even 2-3 pounds I started to feel bloated and fat. That vile anorexic voice started digging her knife into my shoulder again. Here however, I could not listen to that voice; I was inmate patient on an eating disorder unit that bragged of having the “highest weight gain statistics” of any eating disorder program. Who says that!? One of the perks of this program was the “4:00 walk”. As long as patients were stable and eating their meals they were able to participate in a 20 minute walk on the hospital grounds with a staff member. When I was able to go on this walk it became a time to look in the large building reflections at my body, and walk as fast as possible without getting barked at by the nurse. We always walked out of the main hospital entrance and walked back in through The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Cancer Building. There started my fascination with Johns Hopkins, and Medicine in general. It was such a love hate relationship for the longest time. Here was this place that was making me gain this crap tone of weight (in my mind), but at the same time, you can walk down any one of its halls or corridor’s and see a multitude of Physicians, Medical Scientists, and medical specialties I had no idea even existed at the time. The main hospital today has over 1000+ inpatient beds. It’s absolutely amazing. Yet in 2006 the Director of the program was trying to save my life and I was trying to prove superiority to her. After at least a week of eating meals and being fool I was given a tray of food and a metal can of ensure plus. I knew all too well about this. I just decided I was not going to drink and that would be that. So I ate my food and thought things would be fine. I just let that little sucker can of ensure sit there. After the 45 minutes time was up. They asked why I didn’t drink it. I said “I will eat food, but I will not drink ensure, it’s gross and fattening”. Well this is when things got bad. I thought sitting at a nice table in the dining room at Sheppard Pratt was bad (when you don’t eat or drink you supplement). Well here at Hopkins they just sit you right in the quiet room. What’s a quiet room? That’s what I wanted to know. They said that’s where people go when they don’t eat, what it really is, is a room with a mattress and a window, for people who are losing their minds. When it wasn’t occupied by one of our Bipolar friends it was a place for us eating disordered who did not eat.

 

When there was more than one of us who was not eating, one would sit in the quiet room with a little tray in front of them, the other would sit right outside the quiet room facing the wall. Accompanying us was s straight faced vulgar nurse instructed not to speak to us until we had finished our food. And so the battle started. I would not “comply”. It started with me just sitting in the damn quiet room all day. Then they decided I was dehydrated and hooked me up to an IV. The “4:00 walk” was taken away the day I stopped eating. Then my cloths, make-up, and every last personal belonging were taken away. Yes. I was walking around in a hospital gown carrying an IV with me everywhere I went. I hated these people so bad. However I know now, and knew even back then, that the Director of that program is one of the most brilliant people I have ever met. She is extremely blunt and can come off as an ass a lot of the time but she cares about the people she treats. My insurance technically only pays for 30 inpatient psychiatric days per year. I used all those days up alone at Sheppard Pratt. The Director of this Program wrote weekly to my insurance company telling them how sick I was and that I needed to be there. I ended up getting over 3x the amount of days they allow.

When I started putting up a fight and stopped gaining weight, they started the talk of starting me on medication. They wanted to put me on Zyprexa. I didn’t know what it was and I didn’t know why they wanted me on it. Now I do hah. Well I refused because I looked up side effects and they said weight gain was a likely side effect. So the started me on Zoloft. I was okay with this. This in turn started my journey and trials of drug therapy. During my time at Hopkins I had formed strong bonds with other patients just like I had done at Sheppard Pratt. I was even becoming friends with some of the Mood Disorder patients. I saw things that definitely opened my eyes. There were a number of catatonic people. I watched as an elderly lady went from a stone cold catatonic to a walking and sometimes laughing sweet lady. It was pretty amazing. There was also a young man with a shaved head and a large scar on his head and staples. He explained to me that he had gotten in a bad car accident and busted his head, after God told him he was on a mission and to race down the highway at 120 miles per hour… One day a new patient arrived on the mood disorder program and the nurses immediately put her in the quiet room and close and locked the door. This was the first time I had seen them lock someone in the quiet room. The girl was in there for a few days, and as I would walk by I would see paper with writing on it coming from the floor under the door of the quiet room. Someone told me she was trying to communicate with us; using secret messages…my eyes were definitely opened.

I just look back at myself now and see how sick in the head I was. I remember just sitting in the quiet room late at night with my IV waiting to go to bed. I wasn’t allowed to go to bed until 10:00PM. When I was finally allowed to go to bed I kept trying to turn my IV off. And every time the nurse would just walk right in, smile at me and turn it right back on. This nurse was really nice. He was a male nurse and he told me stories of his years of being in Special Forces in the military. He always talked to me which was nice. He also told me of a time when there was a massively sized bipolar patient who was throwing a fit and getting violent. They called a code and apparently this guy had no problem just pancaking him to the ground. I laughed and said I wish I could have seen that. The routine at Hopkins became very tedious. Eventually I gave in and started eating. I got my cloths back, they took the IV out, and I was able to go on the walk again. I was following the minimal guidelines but I was still doing everything in my power to rebel. The bathrooms were not locked and were not monitored after 10:00pm, so after I got off precautions I would spend an hour or two in the bathroom doing squats and crunches… I don’t think they ever found out about that, so to this day I feel very bad about that. It just is very evident that my illness was not truly going away.

 

Well its December 2006 now. I have been in the hospital almost 3 months. I have a good amount of weight, and it’s time for me to go to “Day Hospital”. They guilt trapped my mom into renting a small apartment type place right up the road. So this was my first night out of the hospital in 3 months and I absolutely lost it. There was a huge mirror in this apartment in the dining room and I just started whaling and crying. I think my mom was crying, she probably thought I was on the brink of insanity at this point. But why, the professionals had let me out? I was crying because I was looking in the mirror and seeing a “normal” sized person for the first person in a year. One thing about Johns Hopkins is they are very good about re-feeding and medical monitoring, but in those 3 months I was inpatient they had done nothing for my mind. There is no individual therapy, and there are only 3 group therapies if you want to call them that at all. So there I was 3 months later, in a completely different body but just as sick as ever. I was also used to the structure and security of a rigid inpatient unit, so the lapse of environments was also bothering me. Well eventually I cried myself to sleep and by 7:30AM it was time to wake up and walk to the day hospital, on that oh so familiar unit. A really weird part is about to happen. As soon as we walked out of the apartment I tasted a rich sense of freedom I got the urge to just run. I told my mom I was going to run to the eating disorder program. Does that make sense? Shows how much of a lunatic I was. She pleaded for me not to do it but it was too late, I took off. It was not a far run at all, in fact it was the exact same route for the “4:00 walk” just down the street and in through the cancer building. There I was running for the first time in months, it felt so odd. I felt heavy, but I felt able. Past the pedestrians, past the nurses, past the doctors on the street, and into front entrance of the cancer building I went. I had followed that route so many times. I was beginning to get this big sinking pit feeling in my stomach. I knew what kind of ass whooping I was about to get when I got to the unit. I considered not even going to the unit, but I was a 14 year old anorexic in the middle of Baltimore City with no money, ID, or phone. I had to go.

Well there I was. I knocked on the glass door from outside the unit. One of the nurses was glaring at me and let me in. They wanted to talk to me in “rounds” right away. I walked into the room and there sat my mom (crying I think) the nursing supervisor, the Resident, all the other hoodlums, and the Program Director. This was is it, if my anorexia didn’t kill me; this Psychiatrist certainly was about to. My mom had told her how I acted the night before and how I had run. I don’t remember all the exact words but this Psychiatrist was extremely angry (and quite frankly I don’t blame her). She said “You acted like an animal”!! That phrase I remember exactly. I was acting like an animal, and I was stupid.