My eating disorder: part 6

I was 17 and had no contact with my parents, and I was very sick, and I got on a plane and flew to New Orleans to be with my grandma. She immediately reconnected me with my parents, and my mom flew out to take care of me. I found an eating disorder treatment center in Ohio and flew there.

The treatment center was helpful to me, although not the most practical form of eating disorder treatment. The program followed a strict calorie counting method. They also only used foods with calorie counts; frozen meals, frozen vegetables, only dried fruits.... we had NO fresh foods! Literally every calorie was counted out each day. I got up to 3600 calories a day. If I was short 5 calories I had to add a mini pretzel to make up for it. Crazy and obsessive?? I think YES.

I did really well, however, and gained weight and got to a higher weight than I'd ever been before. I left Ohio feeling healthy and stable, following  their very restrictive meal plan. I lived off pop tarts and pot pies and all kinds of "junk" food. And the recovery period did not last long. As I tried to add "real and normal" foods back into my diet, I didn't know how to do it. I relapsed hard. Started using laxatives and purging again.

When I was 18 I landed myself repeatedly in psychiatric hospitals for suicidal ideation. I started losing weight rapidly. I found myself in an inpatient trauma program, where for the first time I dealt with my trauma as a child. When I left the program, I spiraled out of control. I made it through one semester of college, with all A's, but the day after I took my finals I was running in the park and passed out. Luckily it was med students from Tulane University who found me, and called an ambulance. I was admitted to Children's Hospital with major electrolyte imbalances and a heart arrhythmia. I was in the hospital for a week and discharged with a treatment team; dietician, doctor, and my therapist and psychiatrist. It took under a month of restricting and purging for me to end up in the hospital again. I was told in the hospital that it would not be safe to send me home, so I was sent to an inpatient hospital for eating disorders.

While I was inpatient, I continued purging, and was in a wheel chair for the majority of my stay. I didn't get better, although I did gain some weight back. My insurance cut out and I left against medical advice, and started to restrict and purge again. I was hospitalized again for a suicide attempt. In desperation, I did not think that there were any programs in New Orleans that would be able to help me. So I did the admission process for Rosewood Ranch, and flew to Arizona for treatment. I didn't know it would be the beginning of an entire year of eating disorder treatment.