This is me.
My name is Georgia, and my eating disorder began in June of 2013.
I dropped from 88kg to 68kg before I was diagnosed at the end of August.
By the time we got my diagnosis, though I wasn't underweight, I was nearly dead.
I was eating less than 200 calories a day, and dropping up to a kilo a day.
I was weak, my muscles ached with every movement and standing up or exerting myself was leaving me dizzy and close to blacking out. I was cutting myself almost every day, and felt miserable and exhausted day in day out. But I was losing weight, and that was all that mattered.
After a visit to the doctors, I was admitted to hospital. I was on a medical ward for two days, recovering, before being moved to the adolescent mental health ward, where I was on strict bed rest for another three days. I then stayed on that ward for a week, on a meal plan and bi-weekly weigh-ins and daily blood tests. I was doing well, and they released me. I was at home for less than two days, and I stopped eating again. I cut myself and was very suicidal. My parents took me back to the emergency room, but I begged them not to admit me, and I got taken home again. But from then on, I refused to eat more than a bite at each meal and snack time. Though I was eating more than I had been before, in a week and a half I dropped another 4 kilos. My parents took me to the emergency room again, and my blood sugar was 2.8 - I was lucky to be conscious. I was weak and exhausted, and tests showed that all of my organs, including my heart, were shutting down. They called it full autonomic dysfunction. I was maybe only days away from a massive heart attack, or falling into a hypoglycemic coma.
They admitted me straight away this time, and put me on a drip.
Still, I refused to eat. It was Thursday night.
They took me to the medical ward, where I was on bed rest and had nurses checking in on me every few minutes because I was a suicide risk.Friday afternoon, I had still not touched any of the food they'd given me, and so they put me on a naso-gastric feeding tube. That's a tube that goes down your nose, down your throat and into your stomach, where they can give you the liquid nutrition your body needs.
It hurt my throat badly, and for about a day I still wouldn't eat... but eventually, with the support of some amazing nurses, I started to try my meals. For a few days, most of them had to be topped up through my tube because I couldn't finish them in the allocated time limit, and every now and again I was still refusing, but I quickly learned that the supplement in the tube had more calories than the food they were giving me, and I began to eat more. They took my drip out, because my blood tests and daily weigh-ins were stabilising.
The only problem was, I was still throwing up most of my food, even with the tube in, I'd force myself to throw up, and sometimes have to shove the tube back down my own throat. What I did keep down wasn't being digested properly and I was swinging wildly between sever diarrhea and constipation, with constant nausea and bloating. Re-feeding was painful and unconfortable, and I was still weak.
I was on bed rest on the medical ward for a week before they released me to the mental health ward again. Just before I left, many of the amazing nurses I'd met hugged me and wished me well, and, best of all (!!!) they took out the damn tube!!!
It felt amazing to have that horrible piece of plastic out of my nose and throat, and I desperately hope that will never happen again.
I moved to the adolescent mental health ward, and unlike the first time, there was another girl with an eating disorder. She was very underweight, though far taller than me, she weighed only 40kg. We talked and laughed and cried together, and I'd finally found someone who could relate to the pain of having 'ana' living in your head. I quickly made friends on the ward, and met up again with some people who'd been there a few weeks earlier during my first admission. I was off bed rest, and allowed to participate in activities like art and music therapy, and even cooking group! As any fellow anorexics would know, people with eating disorders LOVE to cook, though don't really love to eat the cooking! :P
A few days later, another two girls with eating disorders arrived. That made four of us, and we became close friends, and still are now. We understood each other in a way no one else could. We all sat together at meal times, supported by the nursing staff through every bite, and encouraging one another to keep eating. Though we didn't quite believe the words ourselves, we reminded each other that for us, food was medicine and was as vital to our bodies as chemotherapy drugs are to a cancer patient. We told each other through every mouthful and every tear that we were beautiful, that we weren't fat, that ana didn't need to control us, that we deserved food and life and recovery.
I was still throwing up some of my meals, but not all of them, I was on supervision for half an hour after meals, and I was making headway.
They decided after a few meetings to try me on some medication, fluoxetine (prozac is the brand name) for my depression, bulimia and self harm, and a drug called olanzipine to help with the anxiety of eating, and my general anxiety about everything at that point.
A few days later, the staff made a drastic decision that the would later realise to be a huge mistake.
They decided, for reasons I still don't understand, to stop treating my eating disorder. I still believe that the only reason they didn't take my ED seriously enough to bother treating it was that I wasn't underweight. But whatever their reasoning, it all stopped. I didn't have to eat my meals, or get weighed. I had no meal support, or post-meal supervision.
I was conflicted over this. The disordered side, the little voice in my head I had come to name Ana, rejoiced. I didn't have to eat! I was still in hospital, but I could starve myself again!!
The other side of my cried and sobbed over this. Cried at the injustice of my life-threatening illness not being taken seriously. Cried, because I knew that Ana would win. I knew I'd stop eating, and there was a little part of me that was scared I was going to die.
And stop eating I did.
Completely.
Not a bite of food and barely any water went in for four days. After a day and a half, I was back on bed rest because my vitals and blood tests had gone horribly bad, and I was weak and dizzy again. Psychologists talked to me, asked me why I wouldn't eat. Nurses told me I was being silly. One told me I didn't even have an eating disorder and I was wasting her time. But I did have an eating disorder, and I was fading fast. I lost another two kilos in those four days.
The staff caught on that I meant business, that my eating disorder was truly there and that it wasn't going to leave me just because I wasn't underweight yet. In fact, it was doing its darndest to make me underweight.
They tested my blood sugar and it was 2.7, again, I was lucky not to be comatose. They begged and pleaded with me until I drank some lemonade, and quickly put me back on eating disorder protocols - meal support, post-meal supervision and weekly weigh-ins.
I'd been on the mental health ward for a week and a half now. I'd started going to the hospital school, and was even enjoying myself some of the time with the new friends I'd made. Most of the time though, I was miserable and just desperate to go home to my family. I had scars up and down my arms because I was scratching myself with my fingernails (which I had stopped biting because I was scared of the calories in them) and with a sharp badge I'd found in the pocket of a pair of jeans.
I was doing better though. I was eating of my own volition now, and though I was still throwing up and skipping some of my snacks, I was on the way to recovery.
I still had a lot to work through though. I was secretly exercising at every chance I got, and constantly jittering and fidgeting to burn calories. My hair was still falling out, and a fine layer of "peach-fuzz" hair, called lunago still coated my skin, my body's attempt to keep warm. However my blood tests were coming good again, and my ECG (heart test thingy) and blood pressure were beginning to become more normal. My heart was no longer irregular or skipping beats.
A week later, I was discharged and said tearful goodbyes to my new friends.
But I was elated to be going home.
A few days after getting home though, my worst nightmare began. I found out my parents had a new regime for treating me. "The World Stops Until You Eat". No more could I refuse meals, no more could I skip even parts of meals. They would sit with me, for 12 hours if they had to, waiting for me to eat my meal.
And as much as I detested this treatment method, by-God it worked. I ate. I lost a little more weight, now weighing about 60kg. But I ate.
I even went on holidays for a week to the beach!
But all hell broke loose when I got back.
I'd upped my anti-depressants, but lowered my anxiety medication, and as a result I became acutely suicidal.
When I got home, I refused to eat anything. I screamed and cried and hid in my room. I broke a new razor blade, and I cut my arms deeply.
I was rocking backward and forward and jittering and crying. I was begging my parents to let me die.
I'd never felt so horrifically bad in my life.
My parents, worried for my safety, took me back to the emergency room.
A kind doctor glued my cuts together - they were deep - and bandaged me up. They then admitted me in what's called a "crisis admission" to the mental health ward for a third time.
I was there for three days, and though I didn't eat much, I calmed down a lot, and got used to the new dosages of my medication. At least I was safe. I made even more new friends, most shockingly, my anorexic room mate Zara, who at the time of her admission, weighed just 28kg.
But I helped her through her meals, just like the ED girls had done during my last admission, and I even helped her to avoid being tube fed by encouraging her to eat.
After my discharge, I began to do a lot better. I stuck to my meal plan, and my weight stabilised at around 57kg, the least I'd weighed since I was about 9 years old.
Over the following months I became stronger and healthier, and though I still exercised more than I should, I was recovering.
But everything fell apart yet again in April 2014. My weight shot up (we later found out this was because of some serious hormone imbalances, I still wasn't getting my period) to around 60kg (or thereabouts, I haven't been told my weight in weeks because it's too scary for me) and though I was eating with relative ease now, I was (and still am) acutely depressed. I don't want to go to school, or try. The perfectionist side of me is being just awful and is telling me I'm fat and disgusting and worthless. No matter what I do, I can't escape the black hole of nothingness that is my life. I'm still convinced that as soon as I have to opportunity, I'll starve myself again. And if I can't be skinny, I want to be dead.
I've got an appointment with my treating team tomorrow, and they should begin to help me. But I've started cutting again, and meals get harder and harder by the day.
I don't know how much longer I can keep going like this, but I'm forcing myself to try.
It's hard.
But I have to do it. I don't have much of a choice. So. One day at a time. Meal by meal, bite by bite.
I will recover. In the end.
This blog is for me to post daily updates. I'll talk about my life, my feelings, my experiences as an inpatient, my weightloss journey and just general things about my life as a recovering (and struggling) anorexic.
You can follow me on WeHeartIt at http://weheartit.com/georgia_collings
Twitter at https://twitter.com/GeorgiaCollings
Instagram at http://instagram.com/georgiakc9#
If you ever want to talk, you can DM me on twitter, or email me at georgia.collings@hotmail.com. I'm happy to answer any questions and talk to anyone who needs help. I know what it's like. So please talk to me.
xx
