[Blueberrybook]

Long story short, I had anorexia while in college. I am now 40 years old. I recovered from the ED mostly, though the negative ED thoughts have never 100% gone away, but they have for the most part lessened over the years. I have been in recovery since 2003, with a brief relapse around 2012.

On Valentines Day of this year, I suffered from a perforated ulcer. I never even knew I had an ulcer; my only symptom was mild heartburn I didn’t even consider bad enough to consult my family doctor. When an ulcer perforates, it eats through your stomach and causes a hole in another part of your body (in my case, the duodenum in the small intestine). This is a medical emergency. Without surgery, odds are good that you will develop sepsis, code, and die.

Luckily, I got to the hospital in time, fortunately by ambulance so I wasn’t waiting hours in the ER (the faster the treatment for the issue, the better the outcome). Still, it was a major surgery. I came out of it with an IV, NG tube up my nose, down my throat, catheter, drain, 6 inch incision with 14 staples, so much pain I didn’t even know existed, on a morphine pump for 2 days. I spent 6 days in the hospital. The course of treatment for this issue post surgery had me only on an IV for 5 days, only allowed ice chips, and only given sips of water to swallow medications. Once I could eat solid foods again, my taste buds were off, and it was hard to eat much. Foods didn’t taste right. They were too salty, too sweet, too over cooked. Again, this is very common in people who have had the misfortune to go through this surgery as I have read tons of personal accounts online following exactly my experience.

As a result, I lost a good amount of weight in a short period of time, putting me a bit underweight, but not so bad that people worry about me. Now that my taste buds are working again, and I have more appetite, I don’t really find myself much inclined to gain the weight back. The ED voices are messing with my head. Worse, I had a bad bout of stomach flu this past week, not helping with this issue.

I am between pdocs right now (old pdoc is retiring). I haven’t been to therapy in years. First, we can barely afford my meds and pdoc appts, have lousy insurance, our only income comes from my husband’s job as a high school teacher. I don’t work. My psych issues make it so that every time I try to work, I nearly end up in the psych hospital with mania, depression, or severe panic. They don’t pay high school teachers much, but my husband’s salary puts us above the poverty line and makes me ineligible for any disability or government programs helping to afford health care. I have no clue how we are going to afford my hospitalization; the ambulance ride alone was $928! I am sure the bills from the hospital are just waiting to come, along with bills I now have for needing to see a gastroenterologist and get an upper endoscopy. Our insurance deductible is $7500, and we don’t have that much in the bank, so that is causing me even more anxiety and panic attacks, and anxiety issues never help my appetite. Also, over the years, I must have seen more than 10 therapists and never clicked with one, so it colors my view of being able to find a therapist I like.

Anyway, that old ED part of me likes being a lower weight. When they weighed me at the gastroenterologist for my follow up appointment after hospitalization, the ED voices in my head were cheering at the weight loss. Ugh! Does it never go away?!