5-1-13

This whole blog thing has really become an adrenalin rush for me. I just listen to my I pod and type away madly, making real the images and memories in my head. When I start school in 21 days the blog entries might slow down a little bit. I doubt it though, considering how much I am enjoying this. Since I am taking college composition two this summer, hopefully my grammar and structure get better. Today’s entry is a little less about my eating disorder specifically, and more about the memory of my Nana’s funeral and the trip we took to Michigan to go to the funeral.

May 8, 2008. The day my Nana died. I was heartbroken; a piece of my brain and more importantly my heart had been ripped out. That day also marked the first day I took a sharp object to my arm pierced my own skin. It was just a way or me to see my own pain, for me to see my sorrows. I had recently gotten back from the hospital and just started 9^th grade again and here was my whole family driving up to Michigan for my beloved Nana’s funeral. At the time I didn’t even understand completely how she died. This was the first time I had ever gone to Michigan to see where my Nana lived, unfortunately she wasn’t even there. She was always the one coming to see us. We arroved in Michigan after a really long boring drive. We met my Uncle and my cousin (the second time I had ever met them in my life), and we went into my Nana’s small apartment to collect all her belongings out of apartment. I saw her little bed and my mom pointed out the corner next to the bed she had fallen in when she had her stroke. All of this information hurt. The worst was yet to come.

We got to my Uncle’s house where he had some of her belongings. My mom held the purse my Nana had last used which still had had her wallet, peppermint gum, and tissues. This was a keepsake. We went into the garage and I saw some cloths with blood all over it. These were the cloths she had worn when she was taken to the Emergency Room after vomiting blood. This was all too sad. She died an unpleasant death and I wasn’t even there to say goodbye to someone who meant so much to me. I was too involved in my own ridiculous selfish eating disorder. And she was brain dead in the Intensive Care Unit. My mom knew what she had to do though. My Nana had written in her will that she did not want to be kept alive artificially if there was not hope. She had made that clear. At least she was resting in peace. I kept as many of my Nana’s things as I could. I have her “handbags” as she called them, I have lots of her jewelry, and I even have bathrobe she wore all my life. It’s all in a big box in my closest. She didn’t go to college, but she was a brilliant reader. She went through books like I go through diet mountain dew. I am sure she would be happy that I am writing this blog.

The day of the funeral was sad. It was my first funeral. It was in a small funeral home, not a church. And who better and more qualified to do the funeral than – my dad! He is a chaplain so he had done lots of funerals, but I am sure this funeral was extra hard. And it was, it was the first time I ever saw tears in my dad’s eyes as he spoke about Audrey Heckman, my Nana. My big bad Navy dad was actually showing some tears. There were actually a good bit of people at the funeral, most of whom I did not know. Up until my Nana got real sick she worked at TJ Max. There were employees from TJ Max, lots of family members from my cousin’s side of the family, and I believe the nurse that took care of her at the hospital was there. It was sad. I cried. That was that though. We went home and then I started to have to deal with it. That was the first major person in my life that had died. My eating disorder was still flaming though. The picture I have of myself with my sister and my cousin at the funeral, I remember being horrified at my size. Even through the sadness of one dying, my eating disorder thoughts furnished inside.

I finished the 9^th grade, and I was ready for a summer of volunteering at the hospital again. I was really getting into the volunteering this summer. I started volunteering on the geriatric psychiatric unit, with people with Schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease. What the irony? I was actually volunteering with psychiatric patients. Lots of the patients were kept in “Geri chairs” all day, and it was my responsibility to feed them. I was thrilled with this responsibility. I am sure you can imagine why. I got as close to food as possible without eating it. I poured drinks, put food on forks, but that food never went in my mouth. It went in their mouth. Some of the older patients would ask “You are such a tiny thing, how do you stay so slim”? My reply: “I just watch what I eat, I am probably naturally thin”. I was completely talking out of my ass. I didn’t want them to know I was a psychiatric patient just like them. During this time I become paranoid that the nurses (on the psychiatric unit particularly) would figure me out. I was afraid they could see right through my sunken in eyes right into that sick eating disordered and depressed child. I truly enjoyed the working with the elderly patients though. One lady in particular was my favorite. Her name was Agnes. She was the tiniest little hunched over lady with Alzheimer’s.  I must have looked like her granddaughter, because every day when I walked onto that unit she would walk up to me and call me “Ruth”. She just walked up and down the hall with me in hand. I would help her eat her lunch, then we would walk some more. The nurses tried so hard to explain to Agnes that I was not her granddaughter Ruth. I did too, but it didn’t matter. I was Ruth.

I also worked in the Post Anesthesia Care Unit/PACU as well as the Surgical Admitting Unit/SAU. I worked a lot of places that summer. And I still hopped onto the giant scale in SAU anytime the nurses weren’t looking. I was sick. Sick. Sick. Sick. It was during that summer that I actually got to go into the Operating Room and watch some surgeries. The Doctor that offered to let me watch his surgeries was an Orthopedic Surgeon, so the surgeries I saw were pretty bloody. They instructed me to get into scrubs which were absolutely enormous on me. The first surgery I saw was a knee replacement. As the surgeon was opening up the knee cap, me being the curious George I was said “What is all the yellow stuff”? It was adipose tissue surrounding the leg. The surgeon said “That is adipose tissue or fat, something you don’t have a lot of”.

After that comment I knew people were beginning to catch on. It definitely was easy to. The other thing that gave me away was when I started getting scratches on my arm from “my rabbit”. I didn’t try hiding it at first either. They were so small too. I was working in PACU and one of the Patient Care Technicians (one who I didn’t like at all) asked “How did you get those scratches on your arm”? I had a mini panic attack in my head and thought of every possible conceivable excuse. “I have a rabbit and umm, he scratched me when I tried to pick him up”. Well that excuse went over for maybe a week. I don’t know what I didn’t just put a damn long sleeve shirt on. All of a sudden a giant random male nurse comes up “Marissa sweetie, I know you cut yourself, I have seen it before, and those aren’t accidental scratches”. I was smashed.  They were going to tell the volunteer coordinator and I was going to lose my position. So I sure as hell started to where a nice matching cardigan over my nice volunteer shirt. I didn’t have to cut myself to show that I had issues. The deplorable look of emptiness in my eyes was what gave it away first.