Sick or Hungry? (Part 3) (WARNING: This blog may contain triggers if you are struggling with an eating disorder.)

Wow.  It's been hard to write about my stomach issues.  I've had to remember some very difficult things, but it's actually been good for me to talk about it.  It's been good to remember the hard things--it makes me so grateful for where I am now! 

This post is going to be hard, too.  I'm going to talk about someone very dear to me, and it will probably embarrass him, so I'll just refer to him by his first initial and those of you who know who I'm talking about can silently appreciate his friendship and concern.  He is a good man and our friendship has survived through some pretty rough times.

T moved out of the state in August 2002, but moved back in April (I think) 2003.  During the months he was gone, we chatted and talked on the phone quite a bit, but it was good to have him back in the state.  Sometime in the first half of 2003, a local theater (The Grove in Pleasant Grove) started doing karaoke nights every Friday for a $5 cover.  I think the first karaoke night was in April or May of that year, and many of my theatre friends participated.  We always had a good time--there were contests and theme nights and lots of great music.  I think it was in the fall of that year that T noticed I would say I wasn't hungry, which was usually true, whenever anyone offered me food (at friends' houses, restaurants, or popcorn The Grove).  Sometimes I didn't feel like eating, sometimes my stomach hurt, sometimes the thought of chewing and swallowing was enough to over-activate my gag reflex.  One night during karaoke, T took me outside to talk; I figured it would be about his girl trouble, but it wasn't.  He said "if a friendship isn't worth risking because you're worried about your friend, it's not much of a friendship," then he looked me right in the eyes and said he'd noticed I never ate and confronted me with his concern that I might be anorexic.  I was shocked.  I was angry.  I don't really remember what I told him, but it must have been something along the lines of, "how dare you accuse me of that!"  T reiterated what he said previously--that he was worried enough about me to risk losing my friendship by expressing his concern--and we parted ways. 

I didn't talk to him for two weeks because I was so livid.  When we finally did talk again after I'd calmed down, I told him I appreciated his concern, I wanted to still be friends, and I would work on trying to eat more.  It wasn't until I was sitting in my abnormal psychology class in 2005, listening to the lecture about eating disorders, that I realized T had good reason to be concerned.  I almost started crying in class (that happened a lot in that class--there was some very intense and difficult subject matter) because the realization was so sudden and harsh; the professor was going over the indicators of an eating disorder and I knew I manifested more of them than I wanted to think about.  I wasn't anorexic, but I was definitely experiencing a form of disordered eating and it was too close for comfort.  I talked to T later that week (maybe that same evening) and apologized for being so angry with him months earlier.  I told him he was right to be concerned and thanked him for being willing to risk losing me in order to get me to see what I was doing to myself.

It was after that I remember looking at my thighs and being grateful they weren't skin and bones, being grateful that my body had substance to it.  Some other good friends later told me that they had noticed a physical change (they said my face had started to hollow out) but didn't know how to talk to me about it.  It was enough to know, even years later, that people who loved me were concerned.

My sweet mother also helped; she used to ask me, when she noticed I was cranky or tired, if I'd eaten.  She seemed to understand that sometimes I just wasn't hungry, but she noticed the drop in blood sugar and its effect on me long before I made the connection.  Between my family and my friends, I became more aware of my disordered eating and began to recognize the differences between illness and hunger.  It wasn't that my stomach felt different--it was other things that clued me in.  I sometimes, even now, go through a mental checklist to figure out if it's hunger pain or just pain:  Is it morning?  When was the last time I ate?  Am I cranky?  Did I just do something stressful?  Has it been a bad day at work? 

As I've said earlier, it's not NEARLY as bad as it used to be, but I still have days I just can't tell the difference.  I usually err on the side of hunger, figuring that if I'm actually sick instead, at least I'll have something in my stomach to throw up, which is much more comfortable than the dry heaves.

This is why I won't ever go on a diet unless it's for legitimate medical reasons (allergy, disease, etc).  I don't want to come NEAR anything that could trigger disordered eating behavior, so don't try to convert me to your cabbage soup cleanses or juice fasts. :)

Sick or Hungry? (part 2) (warning: vomit!)

I can't remember when I started really eating normally again, but I do know I was still having issues in 2004 and occasionally since then.  I have frustrating days when I'm just not hungry, or can't tell if I'm sick instead of hungry.  I had a bad week in May--my stomach just hurt and I didn't know if I had a stomach bug or was just stressed and tired and not eating enough.  I get so angry when that happens because I feel like I can't control it.  I tried eating, I tried not eating, I tried antacids, but nothing worked.  I finally gave up and just let my stomach chew on itself for a night and felt better in the morning.  I call it a "grabby" stomach:  sometimes (not nearly as much now) when I eat it's as though my stomach clenches onto the food, which also hurts.  Sometimes I just have to err on the side of hunger.  I figure if I'm going to throw up, at least I'll have something to throw up. 


About two years ago, I was awakened in the middle of the night with the familiar stomach pain.  I drank a glass of milk and pulled out the heating pad, which usually worked.  Not that night.  Not an hour later, the cramps started again and I thought I might be sick, so I headed to the bathroom when things took a turn for the worse.  The cramps became so bad I honestly thought I was having a heart attack.  My chest hurt, I couldn't breathe, and I very literally prayed that I wasn't going to die.  After several agonizing minutes, I was finally able to make myself vomit (HIGHLY unpleasant), which relieved some of the pressure and pain, and cried my way back to bed.  I called my doctor the next day and he diagnosed me with a hiatal hernia--which basically means there is a weak spot in my diaphragm and my stomach likes to try crawling up my esophagus into my chest cavity--and put me on a heavy-duty antacid.  I have some really effective therapies for when it acts up, but I blame the Year From Hell for it.  I didn't have issues until then, and it's been recurrent since.

My stomach issues from the Year From Hell have made me almost paranoid about not eating enough.  This is why I will never go on a restrictive diet unless I become diabetic or something.  The thought of restricting my calorie intake in such a way makes me anxious that I'll go through that kind of near-daily pain again, and I refuse to do it.

Sick or Hungry? (part 1)

I don't remember when I stopped eating during 2002, the Year From Hell.  I remember my body and brain going into "fight or flight" mode at one point soon after it all started but I can't say exactly when or how long after the trigger event.  I may have gradually lost my appetite, or it may have happened suddenly.  In any case, there came a time where I didn't eat very much, if anything, at all.  I just didn't want to, or didn't remember to, or felt too sick to.  I've talked to people about it, and I'm always surprised when some of them say, "Oh, I'd love to have that problem!"  No, you wouldn't.  The problem with the "problem" is that I eventually could no longer tell if I was sick or hungry, because they felt exactly the same.  My stomach would cramp and I'd become nauseated, but because I couldn't tell the difference between illness and hunger, it turned into a vicious cycle:  if I ate, I ran the risk of vomiting.  If I didn't eat, I ran the risk of painful stomach cramps that sometimes doubled me over.  It felt as though someone had reached into my abdomen and was squeezing my stomach or that it was trying to burst through my skin. 

I remember one time in the summer of 2003 when I was visiting my friend Tony for a game night; my stomach hurt so badly that I had to leave his basement apartment to see if the fresh air would help me feel less ill.  My friends were concerned, and as I sat on the cement wall of Tony's stairs, one of them brought me a piece of bread and stayed with me until I ate it.  It was hard to chew and swallow because the nausea was so bad, but I did it and eventually felt better.  The thing is, until I DID feel better, I didn't know if I would.  I didn't know if that stupid piece of bread would make me throw up or not because my stomach felt exactly the same either way.. 

Later that summer, I visited my friend Matthew on Pioneer Day.  I was assisting with some training for work and we'd gotten done later than expected, so Matthew's Pioneer Day celebration was over by the time I got to his apartment.  We talked for a little while, but I was tired and didn't stay very long.  As I stood up to leave, I almost passed out and he had to hold me up until I was steady on my feet.  I don't pass out.  I've never fainted.  I blacked out once, when I was 10 and sprained my foot, and that was only for a few seconds.  I got very faint last year after giving blood and trying to help someone who fainted in the recovery area.  Pioneer Day 2003, though, I came very close to passing out.  Matthew was worried, but I reassured him I was fine and was able to drive home without anything else happening.

It was during this time I started getting bad tension headaches.  I'd become dizzy and get tunnel vision and nausea and barely be able to drive home.  The only thing that helped was sleeping for a couple of hours.  Now I know that my occasional headaches can largely be prevented by eating or drinking, but at the time it didn't occur to me.

When I began to recover, I sometimes had to remind myself to eat.  I had to remember that sometimes, quantity counted more than quality.  If, for instance, nothing but cookies was appetizing, I ate cookies.  Sometimes it was my "whitey white" sandwich of turkey, white bread, and mayonnaise that I ate at least once a day for two or three weeks straight.  Sometimes it was toast or celery or jelly beans or pancakes.  I learned to eat what I was hungry for WHEN I was hungry and not freak out about it, because at least I was eating.