He tried to be gentle. A nurse stood by one side of the bed, holding my hand as I anxiously eyed the hollow tube that would soon be placed inside my nose and down my throat, snaking its way through my body and into my stomach, ready to continously feed me 24/7 until I was able to feed myself.
It was the throat part that broke me.
Slowly the tube was inserted into my nose. Then it hit my throat, and gagging and wretching, I threw up on the floor, the nurse's shoes, and in my hair.
At least I know bulimia's not in my future. I hate to throw up.
The tube was again pushed down into my throat and I started crying as I again retched, leaned over and puked.
Third time. The tube again was gently pushed down into my throat - it had to go in there; it needed to reach my stomach to feed me.
This time I didn't move quick enough to throw up on the floor. The bile - there wasn't much in my stomach, anyway, after a month of starvation, landed on the pillow.
Shaking, I wiped my lips with a tissue. I swallowed hard and breathed slowly, nodding that he should continue to push in the tube. Gulping, gulping, I ignored the gag reflex, albeit with a lot less ease than I am able to suppress hunger.
The tube finally made its way to my stomach, but a certain part needed to open to allow nutrients to flow through the tube and into my stomach.
It wouldn't open. They said I needed to relax in order to allow the tube to enter its final destination.
Relax? I just puked three times, I was shaking and crying, and I was still trying to cough up the tube like a cat coughs up a fur ball.
So the nurse and the technician started using imagery, as in imagine I am in Tahiti and there is this handsome man with a tiny small bathing suit and I am being fed some luscious tropical fruit . . .
STOP! Fruit? Food? I hadn't eaten more than about 100 calories a day in more than a month, I'm still terrified of food, and the thought of anything luscious made want to hurl a fourth time.
Poke with the tube. The stomach wouldn't open. Wiggle the tube and poke some more. The stomach still wouldn't open. Threaten to leave me to go watch the Super Bowl and come back tomorrow . . . I grabbed the technician with both hands, pulled the front of his shirt and dragged him toward me, saying through a gagged throat, "We are staying until you get this damn tube in my stomach, I don't care how long it takes. Forget the Super Bowl!"
Finally, 45 minutes later, he placed a thinner wire through the tube, nudged and prodded, and the tube slid in.
I could be fed and he could go watch the Saints triumph.
The tube still gags me and my nose runs constantly, trying to dislodge this foreign object out of me. But for some reason, it has given me an odd sort of permission to eat. I'm told that happens to many anorexic patients; maybe it's a breaking down of defenses, maybe it's just a sheer desire to get the damn thing out.
I'm still eating what most people would consider minimal. I have been told they don't want to shock my system with too much food too soon. It takes my one hour to eat a simple meal. Small bites, chew until very soft, swallow and gag it past the tube. Then repeat about a thousand times.
And that's eating anorexic-style.
09 February 2010
07 February 2010
Tube day
I get my feeding tube today and I have to admit I am very scared. I'm scared it will hurt. I'm scared of the loss of control. And yes, I'm scared of gaining weight.
This relapse wasn't about weight loss. The drop in pounds was incidental. But any anorexic would be lying if they said they didn't care about weight gain. Because the weight lost is an outward symbol of the inner pain I feel, and part of the stripping of skin and reappearance of protruding hip bones and prominent collarbones shows that to the world.
And then of course there is this world's current obsession with being thin. When I was trolling the pro-ana sites (not allowed here, and that's part of the safety of the hospital), I saw pictures of thin, tanned women who were so beautiful it ached to look at them and think I could never, ever look like them. I know that many of the photos are lies - Photoshopped to show a flawlessness that doesn't exist in nature; I bet many of them get pimples and under-eye circles and have a little flab here and there.
But it is hard not to buy into the lie, and if you are already suffering and your mind tells you not to eat, why not try to be like one of them?
But I want to like being me - dark, wild curly hair, a smile that many say is beautiful, a slender (not skeletal) body, and a few little lines near what my husband calls my "cornflower blue eyes."
And I want to eat normally - sometimes too much, sometimes too little, sometimes a bit of junk food, most of the time just boringly healthy. I'll never be a big eater - that's not been my nature for most of my life, and I am a bit of picky eater even in the best of times. But I could, in the past, scarf down some popcorn at the movies and slurp it down with a regular icy Coke,
I don't want to sit at my plate and eat one grain of rice at a time, one pea at a time; slicing a banana into miniscule pieces so small that I can't even taste it. I don't want to shred my allowed half piece of bread into tiny pieces, balling it up until I can't taste the yeasty taste of whole grain bread with the little piece of nuts because I have crushed the life out of it.
And I don't want to mark my body with red ink, the color of Ana, writing across my hip "Ana Wins." She is not going to win, not if my doctor and others have any say about it. (It's too bad, because I actually like the color red. Maybe someday it will again just be a pretty color for me.)
Just like anorexia has been crushing the life out of me.
So today is tube day. I am scared it will hurt. I'm afraid maybe it won't help. I feel like it marks me as someone who could not get past the demon of Ana without medical help, without tube feeding.
But the choices are either reclaim my life or die Ana. And she doesn't deserve that honor.
When I do die, I hope people will remember me as someone who fought and won, someone who was kind and funny and full of life, a good writer and someone with an insatiable drive to learn new things. Not someone who cowered under Ana. Not someone who sat at her computer and counted every single calorie, and couldn't even take a sip without fear.
And I want to be remember as someone who liked a good hamburger with Swiss cheese, mayo, ketchup, Vidalia onions and a cold beer once in a while. (That's in the future, ha ha.)
This relapse wasn't about weight loss. The drop in pounds was incidental. But any anorexic would be lying if they said they didn't care about weight gain. Because the weight lost is an outward symbol of the inner pain I feel, and part of the stripping of skin and reappearance of protruding hip bones and prominent collarbones shows that to the world.
And then of course there is this world's current obsession with being thin. When I was trolling the pro-ana sites (not allowed here, and that's part of the safety of the hospital), I saw pictures of thin, tanned women who were so beautiful it ached to look at them and think I could never, ever look like them. I know that many of the photos are lies - Photoshopped to show a flawlessness that doesn't exist in nature; I bet many of them get pimples and under-eye circles and have a little flab here and there.
But it is hard not to buy into the lie, and if you are already suffering and your mind tells you not to eat, why not try to be like one of them?
But I want to like being me - dark, wild curly hair, a smile that many say is beautiful, a slender (not skeletal) body, and a few little lines near what my husband calls my "cornflower blue eyes."
And I want to eat normally - sometimes too much, sometimes too little, sometimes a bit of junk food, most of the time just boringly healthy. I'll never be a big eater - that's not been my nature for most of my life, and I am a bit of picky eater even in the best of times. But I could, in the past, scarf down some popcorn at the movies and slurp it down with a regular icy Coke,
I don't want to sit at my plate and eat one grain of rice at a time, one pea at a time; slicing a banana into miniscule pieces so small that I can't even taste it. I don't want to shred my allowed half piece of bread into tiny pieces, balling it up until I can't taste the yeasty taste of whole grain bread with the little piece of nuts because I have crushed the life out of it.
And I don't want to mark my body with red ink, the color of Ana, writing across my hip "Ana Wins." She is not going to win, not if my doctor and others have any say about it. (It's too bad, because I actually like the color red. Maybe someday it will again just be a pretty color for me.)
Just like anorexia has been crushing the life out of me.
So today is tube day. I am scared it will hurt. I'm afraid maybe it won't help. I feel like it marks me as someone who could not get past the demon of Ana without medical help, without tube feeding.
But the choices are either reclaim my life or die Ana. And she doesn't deserve that honor.
When I do die, I hope people will remember me as someone who fought and won, someone who was kind and funny and full of life, a good writer and someone with an insatiable drive to learn new things. Not someone who cowered under Ana. Not someone who sat at her computer and counted every single calorie, and couldn't even take a sip without fear.
And I want to be remember as someone who liked a good hamburger with Swiss cheese, mayo, ketchup, Vidalia onions and a cold beer once in a while. (That's in the future, ha ha.)
05 February 2010
Unsnarling the web
I feel alone and scared, and yet for the first time in a while, hopeful.
I checked myself into Beaumont Hospital today, realizing the downward spiral was only going to continue. I was tired of my starving brain screaming at me that I cannot eat, I must not eat and I do not deserve to eat. The medical tests do not lie - my ketones are at the level of a diabetic's, and Dr. Sackeyfio said any higher and I could have slipped into a coma.
I was becoming so sucked into anorexia, I was becoming Ana. Angela was dying, both literally and spirtually. It final struck me how far I had fallen into Ana's web when I went out Thursday night and purchased a small knife, with the intent of carving Ana into my left hip bone.
I pulled over the side of a dark street, pulled out the knife and slipped down my jeans. I was ready to carve when I became horrified, wondering where I went and who I was. I wasn't totally safe - instead, I wrote Ana in large red letters, a reminder that I will never be free.
I refused to accept that reminder. In the shower this morning, I scrubbed and scrubbed the letters off, feeling dirty that Ana was marked on my flesh. Now there is a big red spot, and I'm proud of that spot, because it was the first step in taking my body back.
I still don't understand how became so enmeshed in Ana's web; snarled, tangled, Angela small and almost dead underneath the cobwebs. I couldn't see past it; I couldn't see anything at all.
And all the time my brain screamed at me, "You do not deserve to eat."
So tomorrow I will be put on a feeding tube, and I am afraid. But someday, I hope, I will remember this time from the distance of past, a memory of a bad relapse that almost killed me, and I will have a cup of hot chocolate, maybe a piece of pie, and lean back into my husband's arms and sigh, "Aren't we glad that's over!"
I checked myself into Beaumont Hospital today, realizing the downward spiral was only going to continue. I was tired of my starving brain screaming at me that I cannot eat, I must not eat and I do not deserve to eat. The medical tests do not lie - my ketones are at the level of a diabetic's, and Dr. Sackeyfio said any higher and I could have slipped into a coma.
I was becoming so sucked into anorexia, I was becoming Ana. Angela was dying, both literally and spirtually. It final struck me how far I had fallen into Ana's web when I went out Thursday night and purchased a small knife, with the intent of carving Ana into my left hip bone.
I pulled over the side of a dark street, pulled out the knife and slipped down my jeans. I was ready to carve when I became horrified, wondering where I went and who I was. I wasn't totally safe - instead, I wrote Ana in large red letters, a reminder that I will never be free.
I refused to accept that reminder. In the shower this morning, I scrubbed and scrubbed the letters off, feeling dirty that Ana was marked on my flesh. Now there is a big red spot, and I'm proud of that spot, because it was the first step in taking my body back.
I still don't understand how became so enmeshed in Ana's web; snarled, tangled, Angela small and almost dead underneath the cobwebs. I couldn't see past it; I couldn't see anything at all.
And all the time my brain screamed at me, "You do not deserve to eat."
So tomorrow I will be put on a feeding tube, and I am afraid. But someday, I hope, I will remember this time from the distance of past, a memory of a bad relapse that almost killed me, and I will have a cup of hot chocolate, maybe a piece of pie, and lean back into my husband's arms and sigh, "Aren't we glad that's over!"
03 February 2010
The web of Ana
I am caught in Ana's web, deluded by her lies and promises . . . Just a few more pounds, she whispers, and we're done. A few more pounds and you can rest. I just need to see your bones more clearly; do not give up, you will be beautiful and you will be free.
It is hard to think, to fight these seductive thoughts. I feel rejected all around — no room at the inn for me, the door is barred shut, recovery not available. Then Ana whispers in her oddly sweet Brunhilde Nazi bitch voice — Why bother? You will be Ana forever.
I feel the sharp images of my bones whenever I move or sit or try to rest; there's no cushion against the hardness of life. I am reminded of what I have lost.
And Ana whispers, "It is good."
I've tasted recovery once and it felt good. I could dance and sing and move again; I felt joy and sadness and crushing disappointments, and I fought through it all. Once you've tasted recovery, returning to the land of Ana wrenches your soul, stabs your heart, and mercilessly taunts you. Ana says, "You will never recover. It was a dream, a false hope and you will die of anorexia."
I know can do it again. But not alone. Please let there be room at the inn soon; allow me to come to you for help, do not turn me away in my helplessness.
Book of Judith 7:25 — "And now there is no one to help us. God has delivered us into their hands to be prostrated before them in thirst and utter helplessness."
01 February 2010
Finding Angela
I am powerless against anorexia.
Those were the five hardest words I've ever had to write. It was so humbling to admit it — me, so strong and ready to deny that nothing is wrong and I can handle anything — and yet so freeing in a way. Maybe I don't have to blame myself. Maybe I can now accept anorexia as the disease it is, and turn over control to those who can help me instead of fighting against their every suggestion, every word. I now know that in order to recovery, I must change.
It also has started me thinking about who I was pre-anorexia, and as my mind floated back to that time of freedom, I felt an aching sense of loss coupled with an intense longing to yet again be that person . . .
I liked books and reading and was interested in so many things — religions, history, medieval times, the life and history of Anne Bolyen, the writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder and more. I studied many things on my own, reading about everything from the flu epidemic of 1918 to the catechism of the Catholic Church to the teachings of Islam. I delved into "The Chronicles of Narnia," exploring the strange new world that Lucy and her siblings found. I was one of the first in line to buy the newest Harry Potter book, and I couldn't wait to dive into my new books for graduate school (even literary theory!) Each new book was like a treasure waiting to be opened and just the smell of the paper and the crispness of the spine was thrilling.
Curling up with a book at bedtime, becoming part of a new world of each offered, devouring the words, no ED thoughts hammering at my brain . . . It sounds so simple, I know. It also sounds like a beautiful, healthy and normal way to spend an evening.
I cared about people, and did things to show that caring. I took part in an in-school program for years, where I was paired with a young student who needed a kind, caring adult to read to him or her and just listen to the day-to-day life of childhood. I remember one young girl, Anna. Anna had long, dark curly hair and looked somewhat like the daughter I've never had. She loved to giggle and was so smart; she didn't really need help with reading, she needed an adult to listen to her sometimes confusing and convoluted life. Each week, we would sit in low chairs, two dark heads bent over as we nibbled on our lunch and explored the different worlds inside books. She loved to talk and create her own stories, and I still pray that she is as healthy and well-adjusted as she was then.
My husband and I went for long walks, watched stupid T.V. shows, talking about politics and the books we were reading and played competitive games of Scrabble. We held hands, snuggled on the couch, and we didn't argue about food. We went out to eat after church on many Sundays, and the time at the restaurant wasn't spent watching my fear as I opened the menu and looked at all the frightening food choices.
I wasn't afraid to go to parties and other events. People didn't scare me then, and my mind wasn't consumed by anorexia. I could relax and enjoy the moment, and actually was considered an interesting and engaging person.
I could write articles without feeling panicked; I could read and understand the words on the page. I could eat without fear, I could be with people and not want to run away and hide any where I could find just to be safe. I could face a variety of situations and not feel fear bubbling up.
I miss the person I was, and right now I am in a period of mourning for that Angela, going through the stages of grief and wondering who I will be when this all plays out. I wonder if anyone else out there feels the same way, because it feels lonely to miss the self you were, and wonder about the self you will be after recovery.
Can I ever become the person I was? No. Time has moved on and anorexia has impacted me. I know I will never be the exact person I was before anorexia.
I want to become a better, stronger person; one who embraces life fully and without fear. I can either continue to be bullied by my anorexia, trying to hide from it (although no matter where I go, my mind is always with me) or embrace the growth opportunities that it offers.
I can let it slowly kill me — and right now, a part of me wants to let Ana win (Jesus, just get this pain over with already! I am so tired, just take me home to peace and love and rest; "For my yoke is easy and my burden light.")
I am ready to concede to Ana. I just realize I can't do it alone. I think of it as nothing less than preparing for war, for the more I try to move toward recovery, the more fire bombs Ana throws at me. She's been a real hissy bitch lately.
But as I think about being powerless, I realize that doesn't mean I'm not without strengths. I have a mentor, my husband, my friends and colleagues and perhaps most importantly, my writing; all formidable weapons against my arch-evil foe Ana.
Those were the five hardest words I've ever had to write. It was so humbling to admit it — me, so strong and ready to deny that nothing is wrong and I can handle anything — and yet so freeing in a way. Maybe I don't have to blame myself. Maybe I can now accept anorexia as the disease it is, and turn over control to those who can help me instead of fighting against their every suggestion, every word. I now know that in order to recovery, I must change.
It also has started me thinking about who I was pre-anorexia, and as my mind floated back to that time of freedom, I felt an aching sense of loss coupled with an intense longing to yet again be that person . . .
I liked books and reading and was interested in so many things — religions, history, medieval times, the life and history of Anne Bolyen, the writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder and more. I studied many things on my own, reading about everything from the flu epidemic of 1918 to the catechism of the Catholic Church to the teachings of Islam. I delved into "The Chronicles of Narnia," exploring the strange new world that Lucy and her siblings found. I was one of the first in line to buy the newest Harry Potter book, and I couldn't wait to dive into my new books for graduate school (even literary theory!) Each new book was like a treasure waiting to be opened and just the smell of the paper and the crispness of the spine was thrilling.
Curling up with a book at bedtime, becoming part of a new world of each offered, devouring the words, no ED thoughts hammering at my brain . . . It sounds so simple, I know. It also sounds like a beautiful, healthy and normal way to spend an evening.
I cared about people, and did things to show that caring. I took part in an in-school program for years, where I was paired with a young student who needed a kind, caring adult to read to him or her and just listen to the day-to-day life of childhood. I remember one young girl, Anna. Anna had long, dark curly hair and looked somewhat like the daughter I've never had. She loved to giggle and was so smart; she didn't really need help with reading, she needed an adult to listen to her sometimes confusing and convoluted life. Each week, we would sit in low chairs, two dark heads bent over as we nibbled on our lunch and explored the different worlds inside books. She loved to talk and create her own stories, and I still pray that she is as healthy and well-adjusted as she was then.
My husband and I went for long walks, watched stupid T.V. shows, talking about politics and the books we were reading and played competitive games of Scrabble. We held hands, snuggled on the couch, and we didn't argue about food. We went out to eat after church on many Sundays, and the time at the restaurant wasn't spent watching my fear as I opened the menu and looked at all the frightening food choices.
I wasn't afraid to go to parties and other events. People didn't scare me then, and my mind wasn't consumed by anorexia. I could relax and enjoy the moment, and actually was considered an interesting and engaging person.
I could write articles without feeling panicked; I could read and understand the words on the page. I could eat without fear, I could be with people and not want to run away and hide any where I could find just to be safe. I could face a variety of situations and not feel fear bubbling up.
I miss the person I was, and right now I am in a period of mourning for that Angela, going through the stages of grief and wondering who I will be when this all plays out. I wonder if anyone else out there feels the same way, because it feels lonely to miss the self you were, and wonder about the self you will be after recovery.
Can I ever become the person I was? No. Time has moved on and anorexia has impacted me. I know I will never be the exact person I was before anorexia.
I want to become a better, stronger person; one who embraces life fully and without fear. I can either continue to be bullied by my anorexia, trying to hide from it (although no matter where I go, my mind is always with me) or embrace the growth opportunities that it offers.
I can let it slowly kill me — and right now, a part of me wants to let Ana win (Jesus, just get this pain over with already! I am so tired, just take me home to peace and love and rest; "For my yoke is easy and my burden light.")
I am ready to concede to Ana. I just realize I can't do it alone. I think of it as nothing less than preparing for war, for the more I try to move toward recovery, the more fire bombs Ana throws at me. She's been a real hissy bitch lately.
But as I think about being powerless, I realize that doesn't mean I'm not without strengths. I have a mentor, my husband, my friends and colleagues and perhaps most importantly, my writing; all formidable weapons against my arch-evil foe Ana.
Now it's time to unbury the Angela underneath Ana.
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