On to 2001....I was living on my own and my life was crumbling. I can honestly say that I never even once tried drugs, and I only drank socially....I was never an alcoholic especially with being an anorexic, because alcohol has colories in it. But my anorexia....oh, my anorexia. It was running rampant. I was taking all sorts of diet pills and laxatives, and I would fast. My fasts meant that I would not eat or drink anything that had even one calorie in it. My fasts meant 0 calories....I wouldn't even allow myself a piece of sugar-free gum because it has 5 calories in it. The longest I fasted was over 4 days....over 100 hours. On top of it, I would go to the gym...even while fasting and do alot of cardio to drop weitght. If there's one thing I knew....I knew how to drop weight, and quickly at that.
Then from fasting and starving myself, when I would try to eat, I would over-eat (binge). It was all or nothing. I hated binging because it would make my weight go up. I would do anything to lose that weight, which included taking laxatives.
One night I took so many laxatives that the next morning, while I was getting ready for work, I literally lost my vision. I was still wide awake and I was walking around at the time, but all of a sudden everything went black. I couldn't see anything. It scared me. That never happened before, and I was scared that my vision wouldn't return. I was feeling my way around my apartment. I "saw" so to speak, what it's like to be blind. I was frightened. It felt like it lasted a long time....but realistically, it probably lasted for about 1 to 2 minutes.
I would smoke cigarettes to help me fast. I was trying to keep myself busy to not eat. I would make up lies in the work place when they had events that had food, as to why I couldn't eat.
I was still cutting myself. It's amazing, I kept everything hidden and excelled at my job(s) and then I got home and would just cut myself. I knew that I needed to work in order to pay for my bills, so I learned how to hide all of the pain that I was in, and to hide my problems that I was facing. I'd put on a fake smile, and hide my problems from the world. I wouldn't allow anybody to see the pain I was in.
My mom knew though. She was still a prescription drug addict, and my dad would always take her side against me. Eventhough I was living on my own, she still had an emotional hold over me.
I'll never forget that day...I was working as an Accounting Analyst, and my mother called me up and told me that she was on her way to the attorney's to get a Power of Attorney over me to declare me incompetent, and I needed to go into treatment for my anorexia, and if I didn't, I wouldn't have a say. That devastated me....and not just then, for years after that. I wasn't incompetent. I had a well paying job, and I was able to support myself completely. I went in to treatment, and my mother never got that Power of Attorney.
If there's one thing I know, it's myself and my body. I knew that going in to treatment would be horrible for me....in fact, I knew that it would be dangerous for me. My anorexia has "triggers".....one of them, is seeing females that are skinnier than me.
So in to the treatment center I went. It was a residential treatment center, and I went there for my anorexia and depression.....actually, severe depression, as every time I was ever diagnosed with depression, I was diagnosed as having "severe depression".
I was right about seeing skinner females triggering me. That place "did me in" so to speak.....eventhough I was watched by the employees there, I was determined to drop weight right before their eyes.....and I did. They couldn't understand how I was dropping weight while they were watching me, but where there's a will, there's a way. They threatened to put me in to a "higher level of care" due to my low weight, as they couldn't seem to handle it.
After 2 months, I was released. I left considerably skinnier than when I entered. Thank you for helping my anorexia "treatment center". When I would talk to the psychiatrist about my depression...she didn't want to hear about it. She told me that they couldn't handle my level of depression and that if I didn't "snap" out of it, that they would have to put me in a "higher level of care". My response? I'm here to get help....I'm not at summer camp. Don't you need to know what I'm feeling to help me? But, they only wanted to hear what they wanted to hear.
Not wanting to go in to a higher level of care, I started telling them what they wanted to hear. Some treatment center. I told them that the anti-depressant (the second one that they tried me on, was working), and that I was starting to feel better. It was all a lie. I'm not stupid by any means.
People don't know how to handle anorexia...they don't know what to do. Most people's answer is to "go in to treatment". But you know what, we are all different. That, nor would anything else work on me. People want a "quick fix"...but there is no "quick fix"....at least not for me.
I was in "treatment" for the months of August 2001 to October 2001. The therapists there told me that I needed to stop talking to my mother, and they told me that she was a "narcissist". I never even heard that word before. As much anger that I had at my mother, and as much as I hated the way she would treat me (as she was still a prescription drug addict and abusive verbally and controlling), I just cried, and said, "but that's my mother".
After treatment I continued talking to my mother. I ignored the advice from 2 different therapists from the treatment center that I was in, eventhough they told me that I would never get better as long as I continued talking to her because of her abuse.
In December of 2001, I was still skinny...and my anorexia was worse than ever. One day while at my apartment, and with no warning signs, I dropped to the ground in pain. It was like somebody just slashed me in the stomach with a knife. I could not stop throwing up.....and this was not food related. This was a pain...not a stomach ache from food. I know my body, and I knew that something was severly wrong.
My mom who lived about 30-45 minutes away from me. came with my dad and took me to the hospital. The pain...oh the pain. It was so very bad. They ran a test and it came out negative, so the doctor sent me home and said that there was nothing wrong with me. But I KNEW that something was wrong.
No sooner did I get home and my mom returned to her home, that the pain kicked in again, and I was throwing up non-stop. I called my mom who had just got home from dropping me off to my home, and I ended up calling 911. The paramedics arrived shortly before my parents did, and I was rushed to the E.R. by ambulance. My mother stayed in the ambulance with me.
My stomach blew up...almost like I was pregnant, and my color changed. Something was definitely wrong. Even the paramedic was worried about me, and that paramedic even called the hospital to check up on me. That's how bad I was.
The doctor was furious to see me return to the hospital claiming that there was nothing wrong with me. My mom stood up to him, and she got me a new doctor. I was admitted immediately. Test after test after test.....all of them came out negative. But I knew something was wrong....I didn't care what the tests said, and I knew that whatever it was, it was very serious.
The pain killers weren't even touching the pain, and I literally wanted to die. There's a certain threshold of pain that a person can take before they feel like they can't take anymore...and I had long hit mine. The pain was beyond bad.
The doctors didn't know what to do, as they didn't know what was going on, so they did a laparoscopy on me. A part of my colon turned black and adhered to my stomach. That is serious. They detached my colon from my stomach and put me on a super high level of antibiotics. I had a fever which kept spiking. The pain was still there. Three days later, they performed surgery on me, and in that 3 days time, my colon adhered itself back to my stomach. They ended up removing approximately 13 inches of my colon. What I had, could have killed me, and I was told that by my doctor.
It took me a long time to heal. After my surgery, my whole body started shutting down....my stomach wasn't working properly; my bladder stopped working; and of course, my colon wasn't working. The team of doctors that I had used to have meetings about me as they discussed how they could try to get me better. It was unexplainable.
I had a morphine line inserted into me during my surgery, which would put morphine straight in to my body via a pump. The morphine didn't even touch the pain, and the and the anesthesiologists had to keep increasing the dosage until they found the proper dosage.
With all of this happening, and not being able to eat, my weight was dropping. Being an anorexic, I didn't mind it at all...in fact, I welcomed the weight loss. I was in the hospital initially for approimately 3 weeks. I was discharged, and I was back in the hospital for about one week after being discharged for one week. Yet more tests. Then I was released again, only to have to be re-admitted back in to the hospital approximately one month later, for just under a week.
They could never explain what happened. I thought it was because of the damage that my eating disorder did to my body, but they said no. And even years later, I was told that my anorexia didn't cause it.
This brings me up to the beginning of 2002....I'm getting closer to 2008, the main reason for my post where my life shattered in an instant.
