Okay, so this is Batty's NEXT plan...

Thank you, my brilliant blog followers, for coming straight back with some very sensible, helpful and practical advice on what to do about the insomnia / social / all the other disarray that the ED's left in its wake. This is what I've decided to do - and I've told Ben that I'm not 'asking' if he'd like to do it, but TELLING him that he needs to do it, so we're doing it, no objections allowed.


Ben, being Ben, says: "Well if it turns out to be rubbish and a total waste of your money, which it probably will be, then I'll pull out."

"Well it's worked for 'the girls' [as I refer to you!!] and they strongly suggest it might work for you. So let's give it a go", I reply.

So I've left a voice mail message with JH, a CBT Therapist / Life Coach / Counsellor, who already knows Ben, his history and his CAMHS psychiatrist, to see if she's available for some sessions.

Back in November 2009 when I first discovered that the waiting list for CAMHS could be up to 6 months and I was freaking out with desperation as Ben's anorexia dragged him down the rabbit hole at an alarming pace, I discovered JH - a private therapist who used to work with CAMHS.

We'd already been to see a private psychiatrist who charged a small fortune. I instinctively knew that he wasn't right for Ben, so I looked around and eventually came across JH.

From the start, she made it clear that there probably wasn't a great deal she could do. Anorexia needed proper treatment from a specialist treatment team like CAMHS. Also, recovery could take years. She wasn't really equipped to help Ben with something so serious which required such long-term specialist treatment.

But we agreed that seeing her would be better than nothing at all. After all, she had experience of treating teenagers with anorexia and other eating disorders, and if we were going to have to wait MONTHS while Ben continued to plummet down hill to goodness only knows where, even death for all I knew, then I had to do something.

And JH did her level best to provide the help and support she could at such an impossibly difficult stage.

We all knew that it was a bit like trying to stop the Titanic from sinking by sticking a band aid over the gash in its side. But it might delay the sinking just long enough to get us through the CAMHS waiting time.

In the event Ben was fast-tracked into CAMHS treatment at the end of January 2010 when he was rushed into the cardio ward with a pulse rate of 29bpm. By now the anorexia was getting serious and so CAMHS stepped in early. So we stopped seeing JH.

But she seems like an excellent starting point for some sort of treatment to ease Ben back into real life and address the confidence, anxiety and social issues.

Of course she may be fully booked up, but we can see.