[tinyghost]

TRIGGER WARNING: Eating disorder, self-harm, para-suicidal talk. Also, this is really really long.


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I've been going through a lot in my life - for the past nine years, literally every month it's something else: either extreme health concerns with my mother (an abusive alcoholic who has had 3 strokes and has seizure disorder (unspecified) - please don't tell me to leave her, as there's many reasons that cannot be right now); financial trouble despite being on disability; inadequate healthcare and lots of loss.

In the last year alone, I have had to come to terms with admitting I've been anorexic for the past 11 years (restricting type), and recently had to come clean when I ate a very high calorie meal that sent me to hospital with a heart rate of 110 resting and 130 standing, low BP, low blood sugar and my electrolytes were out of whack as well. I had heart palpitations and facial and intestinal numbness (it felt like someone injected my face and made me swallow the anesthesia stuff they give you in a 'pink lady' for stomach ulcers at the ER) and just felt terrible. It got worse and the symptoms triggered massive anxiety which led to an eventual hospitalization where I admitted that I was feeling suicidal and had attempted a few weeks prior.

Now, up until then, my best friend knew everything about me except that I was anorexic, and she overheard about my suicide attempt while in hospital with me (damn curtained rooms :< ) - I took 2000mg of seroquel with the intent to wake up, but 1) to show how much I was hurting, 2) because it was Christmas Eve and my mother's last drunken words were "I hope you kill yourself, I don't want to come home to you". She went off to the Christmas dinner I wasn't invited to with family because I'm "still gay" (they're anti-gay) and yeah. I got mad, decided, fine. I'm going to swallow all of my seroquel 50mg tabs and my new 200mg tabs (dosage had increased).

Following that I was immediately put into a DBT program and by March I was starting it (January and February were mostly dealing with physical complications from anorexia and three bouts of walking pneumonia) and on the last week of April I was 'graduated' from the DBT group. Because I had been feeling consistently suicidal for the entire 6 weeks I was in the DBT program and wasn't responding to medication (I'm bipolar II and have BPD; so any SSRI's make me hypo-manic and I refuse lithium) I was labeled 'treatment resistant' and sent to the 9th floor ward (what we call one of the two psych wards in the hospital my DBT program runs out of). I lasted 4 days before I discharged because abuse from another patient made me feel unsafe there.

Shortly after being discharged, there was a townhouse fire across the street from me which triggered my PTSD from surviving a house fire at age 8, and my anxiety worsened. I began restricting again, going down to 90lbs (5'5" and a half; BMI is 15.1) - which, in turn, made me ineligible for our OP eating disorder program. They require a BMI of 16. I attended orientations at Credit Valley Hospital in Mississauga but they denied me because they could not accommodate my lactose intolerance (it legit makes me sick both ways; it's not just a "tummy ache" deal) and Toronto General denied me for the same reason. Homewood and Bellview (or it could be called Bellwood) in Guelph and Toronto also denied me because OHIP (Ontario health insurance program) covered beds are a 4+ year wait list and according to the head of the CVH program "death is imminent" and I would not live out the year "as is".

Throughout all of this, my best friend had to endure it all: suicidal rants; nights of me being sent to EPT (emerg psych at the emergency room), a crisis center that's sort of like a B&B called the Barrett Center; more suicidal rants and venting and nights of tears - even though I promised her I would not harm myself, she still didn't believe me and eventually we had many fights around this.

Shortly into the summer I made friends with a neighbor and his room mate, and naturally, my best friend became friends with them, too. I was away visiting my aunt for two weeks when my best friend was lonely and bored and decided to accept an offer to go out for coffee with the room mate of the neighbor. They went for coffee a few times and eventually started to like one another. My best friend, who was unhappy in her current relationship, ended things with her boyfriend as peacefully and honest as she could, but it still hurt her a lot. She told the other boy she needed time to herself to sort things out and work through this.

The boy persisted, showing up at her house at 3am to tell her he loved her, then sending both of us rude and angry messages via Facebook inbox and text about how we were awful people, she was leading him on (not true) and how I was "blocking her" from seeing him (also not true). This, along with finding out a friend of ours (another ex of hers) had recently been charged with second degree murder of a child just led to an eventual breakdown - for both of us. My best friend took off for seven hours, we had the police looking, her family etc and when she came home, she wouldn't talk to anyone.

This meant she was taken to EPT by the police and then formed for 72 hours, then two weeks. It's been five days that she's been in the psych ward and she was doing okay, responding to her medication, until yesterday when something was brought up during her visit with the resident psychiatrist that upset her. It was like the day she disappeared all over again: her moods fluctuated and then she became depressive and wouldn't talk.

I know it's my turn to be there for her, but I've had my share of things that have chipped away at me too this year:

1) lack of treatment for my eating disorder and being denied psych treatment is really making me feel more and more depressed and suicidal and I have NO other resources anymore

2) I feel her mother blames me in part for this and am selfishly afraid that her mother will convince her not to talk to me/hang with me anymore and nine years of being two sides of one coin, will go down the drain (we're literally each others other half)

3) I don't know how to deal with what's going on with her - I don't want to treat her any differently and yet I don't want to trigger her; we made a promise we would never keep things from each other and all the same, I don't want to trigger her since nothing's getting better for me

4) I had to deal with so much all at once:

• my psychiatric help was taken away
• I was denied treatment for an eating disorder that's getting worse (I cannot do re-feeding on my own and I'm only getting sicker to where I cannot get out of bed most days or walk long distances anymore)
• my mother has suffered her third stroke this year and I'm the only one who can take care of her (and yet I'm too sick to) and financially, I cannot live on my own so we share lease on an apartment together - she also is ineligible for home care but barely takes care of herself
• my best friend nearly killed herself and everyone around us -the two ex friends (neighbors), her mother- all blame me
• having to deal with the stigma of having a friend who committed murder, as well as having to deal with the FACT that he killed someone (a child, no less) is causing me nightmares so bad I'm dreaming about a child's death - a child I never knew to begin with!
• I've been consistently crying myself to sleep every night for the last five years and now, every day, I'm so depressed I don't know what to do with myself

I realize this is long as hell and I just.. I don't know what to DO. I have no one to talk to and the crisis centers I've called here either a) hang up on me, b) tell me to go to EPT, or c) EPT says there's nothing they can do (truth; they cannot prescribe anything for depression in the ER and I'm denied access to any gov-funded psychiatry because of anorexia)... what do I do? I feel like I'm at the end of my tether here and I don't know what to do. I've exhausted all options in real life (except private care as it is not funded by ODSP (disability) or OHIP.

[Rohag]

Hello & Welcome, Tinyghost!

Dilemmas & traumas on top of catch-22s! They deny you psychiatric care due to anorexia, which itself is bound up in psychiatric issues. Oh, and throw in your alcoholic, abusive mother who openly expresses her wish you would die... Not to forget your suicidal best friend whose ex has been charged with the murder of a child.

Do you have access to someone who understands the medical and social bureaucracies in which you're entangled? By that I don't mean another doctor or social worker or clerk who themselves are are part of those bureaucracies, but someone who sees the big picture.

Please keep posting.

[tinyghost]

I will be talking to my GP tomorrow evening but I've exhausted all resources available to me via psychiatry (my clinician I had during my time at the DBT program did everything available) but there really isn't anything else except paying for private psychiatry which I cannot do. I've had friends offer to move me to the US etc, but they don't get 1) I'm not leaving my home when I'd be in the same position there; 2) it's not that easy as just up and moving one day.

[tinyghost]

Ugh, I had a post here but it disappeared. I will be seeing my GP tomorrow but before leaving the DBT program, I exhausted all options with my clinician (in my DBT program you had a clinician, and a psychiatrist); and again in July when I called her to argue my removal from the second DBT program as they sent me a letter. My GP knows how bad my depression and anxiety has gotten and he can't prescribe me anything else, all he can do is fiddle with my seroquel dose which does nothing for me. I've exhausted all options here really :/

[tyrianna324]

wow your life is starting to sound alot like mine altho i swallowed a bunch of pills and i didnt do it for attention lol. You seem to have a few more options in you left that i currently am with out so im sure things will work out for you in the end and you will get the help you need

[tinyghost]

Originally Posted by tyrianna324

wow your life is starting to sound alot like mine altho i swallowed a bunch of pills and i didnt do it for attention lol. You seem to have a few more options in you left that i currently am with out so im sure things will work out for you in the end and you will get the help you need

Uhm, where did I say that I 'swallowed pills for attention'?