Six Years

I’m trying really hard to write this without crying but tears are flooding to my eyes just thinking about it. 6 years ago…wow. I remember life wasn’t much different, nothing out of the ordinary, until my sister came home crying from school one day in April. She said she wouldn’t speak to me unless I ate something. I had been able to hide my eating disorder pretty well the past year and my parent’s didn’t say much except for yelling at me to eat and calling me stupid. It was my sister’s tears that prompted my mom to bring me to the doctor, it was there that I had a bone scan and was diagnosed with osteoporosis, next they found ketones in my urine and told me that my body was eating it’s own muscles, and the final step was the cardiologist. I remember sitting in Dr. Wright’s waiting room, looking around at the newborns waiting to be seen and thinking I didn’t belong here. I never told anyone about the chest pains, I had always just prayed they would go away. First they did an echocardiogram on my heart, little did I know this would become such a custom that I could tell them where to place the electrodes. Next they took an EKG and I waited, shivering in a paper hospital gown, trying to cover up my ribs peering out the side, for the Dr. to come in. Next thing I knew she came in screaming at me and I couldn’t stop the tears. She kept talking about leaking valves, low heart rate, fluid around the heart, and death. My mom never cried, but looked at me in anger as the paper gown began to become soaked with my own tears. My mom asked what to do and when should they put me in the hospital, the doctor looked at her and said yesterday. The next morning I was on a plane to Phoenix Arizona, over a thousand miles from my home. I was dropped off and told I couldn’t talk to my mom for three days, and after that I could speak to her twice a week for 15 minutes. I remember screaming and pleading with her not to leave me here, how could she leave her first born daughter at a place like this? I promised her I’d eat again but she did not believe me and she got in the car and drove away. Later that day they said my weight was too low and they put a feeding tube down my nose to give me extra nutrition. Everything was a blur, I didn’t have an eating disorder and I didn’t belong here. Little did I know I’d end up meeting some of the best friends I’d ever made in my life and cry 8 weeks later because I didn’t want to leave. Those two months were terrifying and although it didn’t “fix” me it opened up my eyes to what I was doing to myself, made me see that I wasn’t the only one feeling this way and going through these things, and gave me people to lean on. We became a family and there are still many girls that I talk to today 6 years later, and when we start seeing the statistics, “one in eight will die from this disease” come true before our very eyes, we band together and give each other the courage to keep going. And although I still fought my disease for another five years, enduring countless hospitalizations, treatment centers, feeding tubes, overdoses, doctors, and therapy sessions…I know I couldn’t have done it without my Remuda girls keeping me going. I thank God everyday for bringing them into my life and I hope someday I can have an impact on someone’s life and recovery the way these people did on mine.