Monday 22 October 2012

Weigh day

Yuck! That about sums up how I feel today. Got woken up at 6.00am, well I say woken but as has become the norm I hadn't actually slept, so made to get up at 6am to be weighed. Having spent every day since Thursday dreading another large jump as it has been doing every week for 6 weeks now I was praying for it to have stayed the same, no such luck. Surprise surprise it's still going up.

I honestly feel like its never going to stop, I feel like no one is in control and it will continue going up and up.
Spoke to staff who have assured me it will stop and plateau but until I see it I just don't believe it.

I couldn't face having a shower because I couldn't stand to see my body! I am horrified every time I see it and find it traumatic to see how hideous and disgusting it looks. I hate how it looks and feels getting bigger and bigger. To be honest I don't even have to look merely just sitting I can feel the extra fat layer and it makes me want to rip my skin off and remove it!!

Prior to admission I remember looking in the mirror and thinking god Bec you look awful, way to thin, boney and that my face was starting to look gaunt. I would still panic if I didn't have a gap on my stomach where my underwear fitted over my hip bones though. I came in to hospital so positive and focused on recovery and so now find it hard to think that I don't really want to recover as I can't imagine not being ill and therefore bigger.

I'm not sure what has changed but I now look in the mirror and can no longer see my bones and I don't think there is any part of me that looks remotely thin or indeed ill, to me my thighs look chunky, my hips look podgy and as for my stomach don't even get me started, fat fat fat!!
Each and every nurse and all family and friends continue to tell me that I am painfully thin and look no different to when I came in and that what I see is not real. In my more rational moments I know that they must be right and that I can't be as big as I think if I look at what my weight is, what I struggle to comprehend however is I don't see anyone else with a distorted view, so I can see if someone is over weight or under weight and if they are just 'normal'. If I can look at them correctly it just feeds the thought that I must be seeing myself correctly and really am getting bigger and bigger and at a ridiculous rate.I don't think it's possible to see a reflection of your self in any other way than how you really look.

In truth though any rate of weight gain in my current mind set will be too much even if I put on 0.1kg it would still be the end of the world as I just can't stand the thought of changing and what that will mean.
I would love to just stop, go back and continue as I was because at least when I was at home eating what ever I wanted and throwing up I didn't have to worry about anorexic thoughts and feelings. I wish my weight had kept dropping to see how low it could have gone and I want to leave and loose what I have gained because I hate myself and in all honesty wouldn't truly care if I did drop dead. I'm sorry to those close to me who find this incredibly hard to hear but I can no longer continue to lie about how I feel to protect you from the devastating and dangerous thoughts and feelings this illness induces. However you can rest easy in the knowledge that for the time being I have no choice in being here and continuing to gain the weight, I just hope that as it goes on my thoughts will change and somewhere a light will be switched on in my head and I will once again want to get better and be able to cope with gaining weight and maybe even start to like who I am.

3 comments:

  1. Keep writing and talking about it - get it all in the open, share it with the people that can help you. It's like doing exploratory surgery and finding the extent of a tumour - it's got to be exposed, known about, before anybody can do anything to get rid of it.

    Keep on keeping on. I promise, honestly, promise that you will not feel this shit forever. It WILL get better. A huge part of that will be your brain having enough fuel to function at its best, and your body not being under such stress.

    Do you have any medications to do stuff like help you sleep or help you cope with the massive anxiety of all this? If you don't, would you want them - could you ask a doctor about it?

    It occurs to me that being moderately stoned for a while might be a reasonably good way of surviving the next few weeks!

    Just wanted to add also that it feels like an immense privilege to read this stuff. My best friend has suffered from anorexia in the past, she's never really been able to talk about what she was experiencing when she was at her illest. I think this blog has and will continue to have huge value as a document of record - just setting down what it's all been like. Shouldn't think there's much written record of what life in an EDICU feels like.

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  2. Thanks Becca. Im sure one day I will believe it can be better. I take medication for anxiety but don't really like the idea of sleeping tablets. Being stoned sounds like a great idea although im not so sure the nurses would agree!

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  3. You can be stoned by other things than the obvious... :) like sleeping pills, for instance! I was on IV morphine for a bit after an operation, I kept falling asleep inbetween spelling out words (letter board) but didn't care in the slightest...

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