Another Day Another Blog Entry 4-22-13

I am really starting to enjoy writing in this little blog of mine. It’s kind of nice getting my story out. Well I am going to talk about how I have been feeling lately, and then I will get back to my story. Since being back from Cumberland Hospital (I have been back about 2 months) I really haven’t been doing much. Well I started this blog which is good I guess. I have been attending DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) group every week which has been okay, but all the group participants are old enough to be my parents and we are “encouraged” not to talk or hangout outside of group.

I see my therapist every week usually; although sometimes she is full. Tomorrow is the day I am seeing my new Psychiatrist and I am very excited. She seems very good, and she actually specializes in eating disorders which is unusual for providers around here. Although a lot of my problems recently don’t even stem from just an eating disorder. I am staring to figure that out. The psychiatrist I have been seeing has me on a band wagon of medications which is supposed to help me. I have been on medications for a very long time. I have definitely seen variations within modern day psychiatry. Some psychiatrists try to use a behavioral modification approach towards everything and use little to no medications – these are usually the psychiatrists that don’t like to “label” a patient with an illness. Then there are psychiatrists and psychologists that say write off the bat that you are “Manic Depressive, Rapid Cycling”, “Major Depressive”, “Anorexia Nervosa Purging Type”,  or just Bat Shit Crazy!!!!! Thankfully there are Psychiatrists in the middle tooJ. Hoping my new one is smack dab in the middle.

Now back to the story…

After 5 and ½ weeks at Sheppard Pratt (the first time) I had turned 14 years old. I was also giving the staff hell because I did not want to gain any more weight. I was learning the tricks of the trade as well. I mean who wouldn’t, almost 50 eating disordered individuals together all day. I watched as people recorded every last corn flake in their diaries followed with the calorie count. I also watched as the staff pulled a buttered role from under the couch…all this was new to me but it had a strange welcoming feeling that just seemed to suck me under even more. I started refusing supplements and various other required things…however I had gained some weight, and I was eating. My parents came up 5 ½ weeks after I was admitted and took me home.

I was a different person. I had seen things. Everything was the same at home though. The eerie feeling of my eating disordered sickness immediately started to tap my shoulder, and soon slap me in the head. My nana was not there though like she had been when I left. She had flown back to Michigan, and the day she arrived home her stomach started to bleed out and she had to have emergency surgery. Two years later she would be dead. To this day I can’t help but thinking it was the site of my sick eating disorder entrenched body that caused such a massive stress attack in my Nana which later killed her.

I was home from Sheppard Pratt 2 ½ weeks before I was admitted to the Johns Hopkins Eating Disorder Unit. In those two weeks I took sickness to a new extreme. I probably attempted to eat enough the first 2 days after being home. But after that the temptation to exercise and restrict was too great. I think I definitely had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder back then, either that or when you get to a certain point of anorexic you just get so entwined in the compulsive ritualistic actions there is no stopping. I was a Sunday I think and I was staring at veggie burger with mustard on it and my mother was pleading with me to eat and I for some god forsaken reason I just could not do it. Then I just started to cry and I couldn’t stop and I thought I was losing my mind. My mom told my dad she was taking me to the ER. My mom drove me the Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters in Norfolk. All I remember is the triage nurse took me in pretty soon. I remember I didn’t want to get on the scale because I didn’t want the nurse to see how much I weighed; but they made me do it anyway. My poor mother explained I had an eating disorder and I had just gotten out of the hospital and I had started to restrict again. They hooked me up to an IV and all I was worried about was if the fluid going into me had calories. The next thing I remember is that they transferred me over to Naval Medical Center Portsmouth, because I was nothing they couldn’t handle, and my dad is in the military. So I spent a night on the Pediatric medical unit hooked up to IV and a cardiac monitor. Oh, and I watched mean girls for the first time. Every time I watch mean girls I still think of that broken little girl in a hospital bed, and it’s sad.

Now there becomes a certain point in the starvation process in which one literally starts losing their mind. I believe I was at that point. The Doctors at the Naval Hospital said they were going to try their best to get my admitted as fast as possible to another eating disorder program in Baltimore. At this point I actually wanted to go. My mind was being harassed by the anorexic witch in head and an eating disorder program would take that witch away, because I had to follow the rules in an eating disorder program.

Well the Doctors at the hospital stupidly discharged me because they had pumped some salt and sugar water into my veins for over 24 hours, and said I would hopefully be being admitted at Johns Hopkins soon. Well it was soon, but for me it felt long because I was a slave to my subconscious. As soon as I got home from the Naval Hospital I went on a nice run. I mean I was healthy; I had been hooked up to IVs for the past day.  

 

The next couple days are extremely blurry to me because it was over 7 years ago and because I was out of my mind. All I know is that I wanted to go to church because I had an issue with staying in the house for any period of time and my parents didn’t want me to because it was a consequence for not eating. Well my sneaky ass just slipped out of the back door and started running down the road. I saw some random church and I went in. I sat in the back row as people were singing. I had never been in this church. I felt like I was about to pass out and I was begging God not to let me pass out in a church. Well when the service was over I went outside and there were my parents and the police. Shit… My parents were so worried about my health that they called the police. That was it. My mom said we are going to Baltimore right now. The next day, after my walk (I had stopped running because I was too weak) we started to drive to Baltimore. And we stayed in a small Comfort in Hotel for about 3 grueling days. I am not really sure the logic as to why we did that. I think my mom just wanted to get my out of the environment I was killing myself in. I know that during those 2-3 days I really didn’t eat hardly anything. My mom called the admissions coordinator all the time to see if it was time for me to come. I was moved to the top of the list, I had priority.

It has not been since those days that I actually ever thought I was going to die. I felt like I was going to die. I lay on my hotel bed crippled a helpless, sick 14 year old deep-rooted in the deadliest of all psychiatric illness. Finally one day in early September of 2006 we got the call that a bed was open and I was going to be admitted. My time at Johns Hopkins Hospital was about to begin. It was “protocol” for all minors to go through the pediatric emergency room. So there my mother and I were, walking up the hill to the Pediatric ER entrance. They did their basic tests and what not, and there I lay on the gurney. My heart rate was too low for me to be admitted to the eating disorder unit, I was going to have to be admitted to a pediatric cardiac unit first, and I was thinking “hell no” so they told me to raise it somehow. So there was my feeble body in the Emergency Room at Johns Hopkins, doing squats in the attempt to raise my heart rate enough to be admitted to the eating disorder unit. That is profoundly pathetic. I am glad I am not there anymore. I would urge anyone who is struggling with an eating disorder, or entertaining the idea that they are glamorous to please think again. It’s not just anorexia that is life controlling too; later on I will talk about my more recent struggle with bulimic symptoms. They are both devastating and they both cause ruin.