The questions I don't have the answer to. Do you?

What constitutes full and absolute recovery from an eating disorder? Can anyone ever fully recover from anorexia without the risk of relapse? How many "recovered" individuals still count calories and control their food intake, albeit while eating enough to put on weight and / or maintain? Can anyone ever lose the fear of "getting fat", especially if they continue to put on weight? Can anyone ever be shot of the so-called co-morbid mental health issues like depression, Aspergers, bi-polar and so on? Is there anyone on this planet who is completely symptom-free of any of these things? And, if so, is that what constitutes full recovery from anorexia? Should we never be talking about "recovery" from anorexia, rather "remission"?

A bit of a tricky one, this...

For so very long I claimed that my son was anything ranging from 95% to 99.99% recovered from the eating disorder that emerged in 2009, was treated between 2010 and 2012, and then self-managed from then onwards after discarding various private therapists. Or even that my son was / is "in remission".

Two meltdowns in one day...

Ben was in a heck of a mood all of yesterday - a true 'downer'. The first meltdown was at lunchtime and the second in the evening. I didn't even mention the diet meal from the weekend until part-way through what ended up as a shouting match between him and me. He insisted the diet meal choice wasn't anything to do with any of this. (I'll put that into the 'pending' file inside my head for now as there's only so much I can deal with at once...)

Good news / Bad news... why I've got mixed feelings this Monday morning

First the Good News... Before the anorexia hijacked my son's life, Ben was at the centre of a fabulous circle of friends. Ben's birthday is in December and he'd get his friends round for a two-night sleepover with food and a cinema trip squeezed in between. It was a two-night event because Ben had so many friends that we simply couldn't get them all into his room. So half would come on the Friday night and swap with the other half for the Saturday night.

Is this blog actually of any use in the wider scheme of things, I wonder...

Ever get the feeling that you are a tiny drop in a massive ocean? Yesterday, while I was trawling around the internet for the latest news on eating disorders, it suddenly hit me that - year upon year - we read reports about avoidable failures in eating disorder treatment, promised funding that never seems to materialise at grass roots level, failures of governments to take eating disorders seriously, media interest in eating disorders at times like Eating Disorders Awareness Week but at no other time, and - worst of all - deaths that should never have been allowed to happen.

Talking with other parents that 'get it' is so helpful and reassuring, in this case our battles with C-PTSD

Yesterday I met up with a dear friend who I originally 'met' through this blog. Like me, she had a teen with anorexia, and her experience of an eating disorder in the family was very similar to mine. So we hit it off right away when we initially corresponded by email and, later, met up in person.

My son and her daughter are now thankfully in remission from anorexia ('remission' or 'recovery'? I feel like it's tempting fate to say 'recovery'...) - and now our experiences are overlapping again. We are both suffering from PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) as the result of those years of battling to get our children through their eating disorder.

In this day and age there is no reason for any GP NOT to recognise the signs of an eating disorder

From having spoken to other families, it seems that it's a case of 'luck of the draw' as to whether you see a GP that understands eating disorders or a GP that doesn't. This report from the Independent newspaper backs up this assumption.

When I took my son to be diagnosed back in Autumn 2009, the GP didn't recognise the signs of an eating disorder. While putting together my book Anorexia came to visit - Families talk about how an eating disorder invaded their lives, I did my own research about GPs and eating disorders. Our local GP said she "probably had two lectures" on mental health and eating disorders as a medical student. Another medical student specialising in psychiatry was surprised to learn that males get eating disorders. And a representative from the RCGP told me that: "Currently only around 50-per-cent of doctors-in-training for general practice have an opportunity to undertake specialist-led mental health or in child health training placements".