Update

   So, it has been awhile and I honestly don't have anything profound to say. I went into surgery last Tuesday for a port placement and I woke up and went home. Most people don't find any of that astounding but everytime I go under anesthesia I feel blessed when my eyes open again and I get to see my beautiful baby boy again. I live everyday in a weakened body and I know that seeing the sun rise is never a promise and everytime they put me under for surgery I know the risks on my malnurished body. Everyday I wake up I feel more and more blessed to have my son and family around. I am very weak most of the time and I rest a lot but I'm still a full time devoted mommy and that is what matters. I've learned through this disease not to take anything for granted because you never know what the next minute will bring.
   I use to think that asking for help made me somehow weaker than everyone else. Even when I was trapped in my anorexia I knew I needed help out of the darkness but I just couldn't bring myself to tell anyone. So many people wanted to help me and I wanted their help but I just couldn't accept it, I couldn't accept there was anything wrong with me. Even laying in a hospital bed hooked up to a feeding tube, ivs, and heart monitors I kept insisting they were wrong and I had everything under control. Its taken me this long to let go of the idea...control is an illusion and my actions throughout those years expressed everything but being in control. I can admit I still have trouble asking for help but I'm getting better, I can ask my parents for help with damien when I'm too sick to play with him or having to ask josh for help getting our new place set up. I've always wanted to be the one in charge and now I can't do everything I want to do and its difficult but now I know there are more important things like being here to watch my son grow up and raising awareness for those with eating disorders and gastroparesis.
   Today is just a short post...I'm recovering from my central line placement slowly but surely. Its difficult not being able to pick up damien but that will pass soon enough. I promise I will have a more interesting entry tomorrow for now I'm just going to rest.

Couldn't See

   When I was lost in my eating disorder I couldn't see the sick girl in the mirror that everyone told me I was. I continually saw fat, ugly, and unworthy instead of what was really there, a girl starving herself to death unable tell anyone what was going on, unable to get that monster screaming in my head to shut up. Today when I looked in the mirror I could see what everyone else saw then, this time it is because of a disease that I can't cure and I can't stop and was most likely made so severe because of years of anorexia and bulimia.
   I haven't been able to take in fluids or tube feeds in days, I haven't been able to take care of my baby without help from josh and my parents which I am lucky to have, and unlike those days during my ED I am scared. I didn't know how sick I was years ago, I was looking at a mirror through blinders. Today when I looked in as I was mixing my meds and flushing my tube I saw the dark circles under my eyes, the dried out lips, and pale. I'm having surgery on Tuesday for a port to be placed again for fluids and most likely partial TPN, which means living everyday hoping to avoid a life threatening line infection or the liver damage that IV nutrition causes. I'm terrified of leaving my baby without a mother, terrified that he will never know me or know how much I loved him and how much he changed me for the better. I'm more scared than I have ever been, terrified to shut my eyes because I won't wake up to my beautiful blue eyed baby calling me.
   I wish I could go back to that girl who couldn't see what was there, who couldn't see that she had a future, who couldn't see there was more to her than that eating disordered cutter, and who never guessed at twenty six would be terrified to shut her eyes at night. I wish I could save her from this, but I can't the only thing I can do is raise awareness for others so they don't have to face this and raise awareness for everyone who suffers from gastroparesis or digestive tract paralysis who suffer with it and never did anything to deserve it, who give their lives at young ages because there is no cure and the body can only take so much...nothing gets done unless people come together and speak out. I'm tired of losing people to these diseases, I'm tired of being sick all the time, and I'm tired of being scared. I know life isn't a promise, there are those who die young who have seemingly done everything right with their bodies and still they give out, but eating disorders are treatable with the proper treatment and gastroparesis/DTP can be cured with us pushing for new medicines and new treatments. I don't want my life to be a waste and I don't want to have gone through everything for nothing. I didn't make the choice to become anorexic, but I do believe if insurance would have paid for proper treatment when I was young I might have been able to recover before destroying my body, by the time I could shut the monster out it was too late and the damage was done. I have a medical file that lists over 85 procedures and surgeries, countless weeks in hospital beds, declaring me chronic...they labeled me a chronic anorexic at one point but I managed to prove them wrong. I can't deny the other diagnosis, as of now the only long term possibility is a five organ transplant which comes with a whole mess of complications and no promises. To anyone who reads this please pay attention...eating disorders are not a choice and GP/DTP are real, life threatening diseases to which there is no cure. If you know someone who is suffering from either or even both help raise awareness and if you are suffering know you aren't alone and your life is precious.

My day

   I wanted to share how my day goes...I wake up to my lil man either crying or laughing between six and seven, sometimes he let's mommy doze until eight while he plays in his crib. We get up and I make him a yummy breakfast followed by hardcore playtime and then by ten my early bird needs nappy number one. While he does his usual quiet play before he falls asleep. As he is in there I fill up my backpack with my feeds and take a dose of pain meds to cut the horrible pain that is about to make me cry and throw up . The pain will be so bad that during nap I will cry and curl up on the bed until my beautiful lil boy wakes up then I go to the bathroom and wash my face and despite the pain I smile at him and we play because through all my pain I do my best to hide it from damien. He has no idea that I spend a lot of his quiet times crying or lurching over the toilet in the bathroom. All he knows is I'm his mommy, the one who takes care of him when he is sick, makes him smile when he is sad, and devotes every aspect of my being into making him a great young man and hopefully a wonderful gentleman when he grows up. I sometimes let those thoughts breakthrough my headt that its not fair I'm sick and so on and so on but dwelling on that takes away the beautiful moments I have with my miraculous son.
    I have fought too hard to let this disease take away the only things that make me happy...my son and my family. I almost lost everything once to my anorexia, no one wanted to be around me hell I didn't want to be around me. Today I feel like a completely different person gastroparesis and intestinal failure aside recovery from my eating disorder changed me. I think the battle with my anorexia, bulimia, and cutting made me stronger which has come in handy a lot lately. I think years of battling with myself I'm now strong enough to battle whatever is thrown at me. On the days where pain is so bad I want to run away I can mommy up and face it...I will face anything that is thrown because I have to be here to make that blue eyed boy smile everyday.

Consequences

   So many young girls are out there striving to be anorexic, they look at pictures and thinspiration sites on the internet and they think they can make themselves anorexic. I've even done research on youtube and on very sick posts there are comments like "I wish I had your control", "If only I could be that thin", and "you are so hardcore" (referring to seeing people with feeding tubes). It makes me angry and it makes me sad because they don't know what kind of hell they are striving for.
   My anorexia started at fifteen officially diagnosed my senior year, the year that was suppose to be and exciting was doctors appointments, dieticians, constantly being watched around food even at school they watched me all the time making sure I didn't restrict too much, trying to keep me from purging and looking at me wondering if I was hiding cuts. Don't get me wrong I did have fun but I was a very sick girl. I managed to get a scholarship to college for music and thought things were great until my therapist informed me I wouldn't be attending school because I needed to be put in the hospital. On my 19th birthday I was admitted to a residential treatment center where you are constantly watched and following a strict meal plan...you have to have staff in the bathroom while you pee or poop...there was no privacy. I was there for three months and they finally had to let me go because of insurance not much better. The weight I gained came back off and I was worse than ever. My parents sent me to college close by and by November I was being seen by the eating disorder specialist at the hosptial which was connected with the school within a month he admitted me to the hospital and ordered a feeding tube to get some nutrition in me...they passed a tube down my nose past my stomach into my small intestine so there was no purging...and the process of placing the tube was uncomfortable to say the least. I spent the next three years in and out of the hospital being force fed and brought back to life with three stays on a strict eating disorder unit where, once again you are treated with no privacy.
   All those years were suppose to be the time of my life, going to college enjoying my teen and young adult years and I was trapped in my anorexic mind and never enjoyed anything. The semester I made it in college I did fine grade wise despite spending most of my time running on treadmills at student rec center. All of this because I thought not eating and being thin would make the pain go away, pains from a rough childhood...if I could just focus on the food and the numbers I wouldn't have to remember my alcoholic mom and the venom she spewed at me or the bruises she left. Anorexia and bulimia are diseases you can't try to have one...they are mental illnesses that have the highest mortality rate of anyother mental illness.
   It took me years and three overdoses to finally decide I wanted recovery. Unfortunately this disease that so many people crave had destroyed my stomach...I developed a condition known as gastroparesis which paralyzed my stomach. A surgeon removed 90% of my stomach and put in a surgical j tube to feed me. The condition worsened which caused more surgeries unbelievable pain, they eventually put a central line in and fed me through my veins until I was blessed to get pregnant with damien which we were told we would die but I thank the Lord everyday we made it. As I write this to you I am 26 years old my intestines are failing, I already have a tube in my small intestine feeding me as much as my body will take, I'm scheduled to have another surgery to have a port placed so I can have iv hydration and nutrition at home, I'm on daily doses of narcotics just to tolerate the unbearable pain I feel in my guts all the time, and ontop of that they took away my ability to have anymore babies because my body would die if I got pregnant again. Eventually, I will need a transplant to save my life. Are you jealous of me and my. Anorexia yet? I've been in recovery for almost three years and it sickens me to see so many people trying to be anorexic...that's all those "thinspo" sites are aimed at...young kids who think that anorexia is a cool game to play when its not. Two beautiful young women have lost their lives just this week to the monster. A lot of us are left to live on tubes forever because we've killed our stomachs. Do you think its fashionable to carry around a backpack everywhere with a tube hanging out of it feeding into your body?
   Anorexia and bulimia aren't games and if you are bogged down in the diseases get help before its too late because you are beautiful and the number on the scale has nothing to do with your beauty or your worth. Fight for recovery...its hard, trust me I know but you are worth it. You deserve a life free from numbers and hospital admissions. I was declared chronic, my anorexia was suppose to kill med but I killed that monster in my head or at least can control it because trust me it tries to break in but I know how to fight it. So many people tried to help an amazing doc never gave up on me and here I am recovered and yet dying inside from intestinal/gut failure. I want you to understand that this is a serious disease that will ruin your life and could kill you please keep fighting. And, if you don't have and eating disorder and your body image has you seeking out ways to develop one I suggest you talk to someone because anorexia and bulimia are not lifestyle choices they are deadly diseases. Please don't hurt yourself like I did I'm sitting here hooked up to a backpack full of "food" that goes in and causes terrible pain and barely absorbes...I depend on a tube to live...you deserve better than that. Sometimes recovery comes too late...so think about it before you click on another pro anorexia bulimia site or wish you could be sick like the girls on youtube.