I made this blog so i could get ed-centred rants out, but at the moment it feels like my entire life centres around having an eating disorder, but anyway...
I first stopped eating when i was 11 after the girl id been best friends with since i was 3 told me i had hippopotamous thighs...looking back this was a pretty funny insult to cause such a lifechanging effect, but it did, and theres nothing i can do about it now. I wasnt fat, i was tall and lanky, being the first in my year at an all girls school to suddenly hit puberty. But i felt fat. Looking back i think maybe in my 11 year old brain i was interpreting 'bigger than my friends height/boobs wise' as 'ah ive suddenly gotten fat'.
I started getting up earlier than usual so i could 'have breakfast'. This consisted of making cereal pouring noises, fridge opening noises, scraping a spoon round my obviously empty bowl and pouring orange juice down the sink.
At school i joined the cross country running club which was at lunchtimes, and when that stopped happening (small school,not enough people interested) i started running around the school field, or playing tennis, then saying id eaten earlier or whatever. When i did have to go to lunch id get whatever my friends got but then only eat the cucumber slices.
Obviously people started to notice, but not eating was sort of a popular thing to do at school, which looking back is so sad to think that we were 11 and so image concious. So my friends werent an issue, the teachers were. I was sent for counselling and put on lunch report card and my mum was informed.
I got sent to an adolescent unit and they decided i was 'eating disorder but without anorexic pathology' and as i refused any help they let me go.
This restricting went on till i was 16, GCSEs. I had to move house out of the house id lived in all of my life, due to the reasons that are probably the entire reason for my ed in first place (i dont think my friend calling me hippo thighs is what actually caused it,it probably has deeper links to my traumatic childhood).
This was a hard time for me, id been made for my own safety to move away from my home, i was in middle of gcse's which were massively important for me as i was trying to get into med school, and then, my mum's dad has a heart attack the night before my first gcse. He was intensive care for ages and then died. Then there was the funeral.
This was all awful for the obvious reasons- i loved him, i was upset, grieving and so on. But what really affected me during that time was my mum. She had always been there for me. My dad worked away from home and i barely saw him and when i did at that time we always argued.
Suddenly mum was always at the hospital and when she was home she was (understandably) distraught. But i was the selfish 16 year old who felt she had the most important exams of her life and had just been abandoned by her mum and had a dad who didnt understand her who was suddenly back in her life the week of her gcse's. on top of all this i was of course feeling massively guilty for being so selfish when my mum was obviously even more upset than i was about our bereavement.
so basically there was lots going on that year. the restricting turned to bingeing. i still didnt eat at school but would come home and eat choc muffins, pancakes,supper,pudding,ice cream infront of tv after supper,crisps when doing homework,sweets a bit later....etc etc...going from restricting for 5 years to that....well i ballloooooned!
then i moved school for 6th form. having just done awfully in my gcse's (not actually, but im a perfectionist, and didnt get 10 A*s... gcse results day was at the time i felt one of the worst days of my life). i moved to a very academic school. i went from being top of class without any effort to bottom of class and having been at an all girls school all my life i was suddenly doing science a levels and was the only girl.
i was a weekly boarder and started restricting again.it was hard going from top of the school in everything to being the dunce, who got laughed at for wanting to be a doctor. it was during 6th form that the purging started. my 2 years at that school i only went into the meal hall 2x. my first day there, and my last day there. we had little kitchens in our boarding house which id make cups of hot choc in, and i ate lots of apples and if i was going to purge then cereal. everyone knew i had weird food habits...sometimes id eat a whole box a day,,,and i went through phases, sometimes obsessed with cheerios, then shreddies, then cheerios again.
i remember a trip to a chemistry lecture in london once we all went for lunch. i bought some chips from mcdonalds and was so excited about treating myself. then a guy in my class leant over and grabbed one. it was so embarrassing as i had to try so hard not to burst into tears. id been working myself up to this treat, then he ruined it for me by touching my food.
i have lots of rules, my close friends know about them and both respect them and laugh at me for them!
i struggle to go for supper at friends' because ill only eat food prepared by my mum. sometimes ill eat food my friends or their parents have cooked if i can watch it being prepared, see that theyve been hygienic, seen the wrappers and so know the quality of the food etc.
i cant eat food that anyone else has touched, so pick n mix/popcorn etc on cinema nights is tricky, as are sharing bag of crisps or something. again,most people know this, so i automatically get my own bowl or box,but i know when i first started uni people thought it was weird, now i guess its just one of those quirks that some people have!
so yes, i spent 2 years of 6th form being bulimic i guess you could call it, but it wasnt a big deal. the school i was at it was like in the culture to have an eating disorder. every morning at there would be announcements about toilets blocked with vomit, can the older girls be there for the younger girls because loads of them arent eating etc...all the time i knew myself and others in my year were also eating disordered. but everyone just got on with it.
i had a gap year. and this is where things got really bad. i had to have major surgery. up until then id been really active always been training for one event or another. i used to over exercise so much that id then be on crutches for weeks after a gym session,but id crutch my way to the gym, take loads of painkillers,do a gym session, then crutch home again.
this surgery i had destroyed me. the rehab for it was longer than expected. the surgery was almost 2 years ago now and last week was the first time i was able to run properly without a limp for more than 2minutes. im still recovering due to muscle wasting but im doing lots of physio so my hope was to be able to get back to full fitness and start training properly again...then at xmas hols at my check up i found out ive got to have more surgery this easter...
the reason im telling you this is because i feel this lack of exercise is what has catapulted the slightly weird eating patterns ive had for 10 years from a bit weird to insane. without exercise im lost. i used to exercise when stressed,sad,worried,anxious, and then id feel better. for 2 years i havent been able to do that so ive been feeling more stressed, and then of course i feel fat because im not exercising. so its like, why eat if im not exercising? fasting gives me the same feeling exercising used to. now when i go to the gym i just get frustrated because my leg doesnt work. but fasting is something im good at.
im now in my second year of medical school. this term one year ago things got bad. i was making myself vomit several times a day, even if i hadnt eaten, and i was chewing gum like crazy for its laxative effect. i was falling behind with my studies and finding it hard to get out of bed because i was always feeling so weak. so i went to the gp, broke down as for first time in ten years i admitted i had a problem.
that was a year ago and the 'treatment' i asked for has yet to happen...
the original gp said i was too complicated for him, but that there was a specialist gp there...shes really nice and shes the one i see most who has been trying to help me...
she referred me to cmht...i didnt get appointment till summer holidays (by which point mum had found out and was being really supportive)... at the appointment in summer they assessed me...then a few months later i got letter saying sorry you dont meet the criterion for referally to the areas ED centre for proper treatment,but hey why dont you go to the selfhelp bulimia group (this was stupid as my tendencies were ana not mia).
i was upset by the system...they basically told me im too fat for treatment,come back when your bmi is 16...the system is so backwards?!!
then last term things got worse,i stopped eating and drinking altogether and ended up in hospital with dehydration. i was fainting up to 4x a day and my blood pressure was 80/50 permanently.
the specialist gp did me a personal referral to the ED centre (so this time bypassing the cmht id previously been assessed by) and this time they agreed to treat me...because my bmi was below 19 by this point.
i got given an appointment ... for this tuesday...
so when i came back after xmas i was determined to go to this appointment, i was fasting even more than usual because i wanted my bmi to be 17.5 by the appointment to make sure i got treated. then thing went bizarrely weird. at some point in the last 2 weeks, i dont know when were or why, i changed my mind.
i now dont want treatment. i dont need it. if i went to the appointment id be the laughing stock because im so fat theres no way i can have an eating disorder. so ive gone the opposite way and have been binge eating for the first time in years, without vomiting very much, to GAIN. yes i am TRYING TO GAIN...because i am scared of getting treatment. now this is hilarious as im so fat anyway they wldnt have treated me, yet im so scared of them telling me i need help im making myself even fatter on purpose!
so of course because ive been eating im low low low lowwwwwwwwwww barely getting out of bed etc...then i realised...im SUCH AN IDIOT...all i have to do is NOT GO TO THE APPOINTMENT!!! duhhhhh. so ive been stuffing my face making myself depressed by eating, when all i had to do is not go!!! so thats it, im back on my fast, and im not going to the appointment. i dont want help because i dont neeeeed help. im the most obese person ive ever met so why would i go to an ed centre?!!!
i feel so silly for going for help a year ago. but it worries me that people that actually need help would get treated like i have by the system. if youre not anorexic with a really low bmi you just get thrown from place to place, referred on here and there, but never actually helped.
but here is to new beginnings... monday morning i am calling to say thank you but i dont need the appointment.
then i will start afresh, my way.
there is so much i wanted to say in this post about my current life, but i think its too long already so ill submit this one and write another about the specific things i have to say!
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