By the beginning of 2010, my son's anorexia was getting worse and we still didn't have a date for treatment. Ben was changing in front our eyes into someone we didn't recognise: physically or mentally, and the doctors didn't seem particularly bothered. Plus, the learning curve was enormous - we'd never in a million years ever thought that our son would get anorexia.
I'm
wondering if any of this rings a bell with you, if you're worried your
son might be developing an eating disorder? That's why I've decided to
publish the journal notes I made during the last few months of 2009 and start of 2010.
It's quite lengthy, so this is Part Seven - written in note form.
From my 2010 Journal Notes.docx file (Part Seven):
Early 2010
Looking at family photographs was a painful, instant reminder of what my son used to look like and should look like, but didn't anymore.
We had a thin waif for a son who looked like a concentration camp victim and whose mood was so volatile I was terrified every time I picked him up from school for fear of how his day had been.
For any parent, watching your child suffer with anorexia is one of the most excruciating and painful things you'll ever face. I just wished there was a magic pill you could take and - Hey Presto! - our old son would be back.
I wept every single day. Unlike a physical illness, you can't take any medication for anorexia (apart from anti-depressants). You can't have an operation and it goes away. Worse, the wonderful, level-headed, intelligent child you've spent 16 years rearing and getting to know has undergone a total transformation into a volatile stranger whose very sanity seems to have gone AWOL.
[From my post on the FEAST Forum] I am sure that every one of you reading this will know what I mean when you feel heartbroken seeing your once beautiful, confident, intelligent, friendly, popular child descend into this wreck of a human being who spots the calorie content on some ciabatta he's supposed to have for tea, becomes a quivering wreck of sobbing, banging head against the wall as if he's about to break his skull...
[More from my notes] Initially, anorexia creates a myriad of emotions in the parent You feel angry. ("Can't he see what he's doing to himself / us?!") You feel frightened. ("How long is the anorexia going to last? Will he ever come through it? Will we ever get our boy back?") You feel frantic. ("What damage is anorexia doing to his body? Could something tip the balance and lead to the 'S' word we never mention and daren't even think about?") You feel preoccupied. (You can't think of anything but anorexia and the situation.) You feel jealous. ("Why is everyone else's child OK when mine isn't?") You feel guilty. ("Is it something we've done as parents? Should we have picked up on it earlier?") You feel frightened – an emotion that quickly changes to fear and terror as you scour the Internet for information about the illness and read the mortality statistics.
Then you panic as you realise just how far away the first treatment session still is. [We were on a long waiting list for eating disorder treatment]
Anorexia also makes you feel very isolated. Okay, there are anorexia helplines you can call [the UK Charity BEAT] and a fabulous forum [the FEAST Forum, see link below]. But it's difficult to talk to a 'lay person' about it; to the outside world it's such a little-known, much misunderstood and even taboo condition.
I knew virtually nothing about anorexia until our son contracted it. Over the following 18 months or so I became an anorexia expert! The learning curve was ENORMOUS – and necessary. And of course I knew NOTHING about EDs back then and couldn't understand the dramatic changes in his behaviour (which didn't appear to interest the GPs that much...)
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Looking for support?
F.E.A.S.T. is an international charity that supports parents and carers of young people with eating disorders. It was a lifesaver for us.
- FEAST website (Families Empowered and Supporting the Treatment of Eating Disorders).
- FEAST's Forum
- FEAST's (private) Facebook group (ATDTfb - Eating Disorder Family and Carer Support)
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