"My Story"

So, I guess it is expected of me to write a "my story" post due to the fact that I am part of the recovery community and 9/10 people have done it. I guess my story is different to a lot of peoples, well everyone's is different and unique, but mine doesn't seem to follow the theme of stereotypical recovery stories so I guess I will just have to explain. 

This is 7-8 year old me, new years eve (2007).

I had a fairly normal childhood, well what seemed to me as normal. I grew up with 2 older brothers and one younger sister, I lived with my mum and my dad however they separated when i was very young but I didn't know any differently and I often had carers and au pairs throughout my life and that was what I was kind of used to. As a child I was obsessed with animals, I wanted to become a jockey to make my father proud and one day win the grand national (oh the irony of the fact I'm now vegan), I loved anything disney and I still do, I laughed and smiled and enjoyed playing dress up with my sisters and oh boi halloween was a big event in my family  (pictured below) and I loved to bake and cook and I would always ask to help my mum or the au pairs cook. 

Ever since I was around the age of 8 I have had a strange relationship with food. I had always been concerned about my shape and size and weight relationship and I remember trying to steal the scales from my mums room to try weigh myself at the young age of only 8-9 and honestly I think that is one of the most heart breaking sentences of my life. I do not see why I would ever have wanted to weigh myself at the age of 8 however I guess this was a foreshadowing moment of the future. When I was 8 I decided on my own I would become vegetarian, it was completely out of the blue. My mum told me she thought I was just impressionable to people around me however I knew no other vegetarians at the time and it was really strange. In reality, the moment I became vegetarian was the day my eating disorder was developing so I guess that is where my story really starts. 

My eating disorder was formed from completely irrational ideas from a young age, it was constantly changing life mood swings however it was reflected on food. One day I would swear to everyone around me that I would never eat a grape again, however the next day I would eat punnets of grapes and the food I would be avoiding that day was ice-cream etc etc. It didn't make sense, I think my family members thought this was a thing I would grow out of but I guess it was my eating disorder just developing. 

I remember I was with my year 4 teacher (around the age of 9) and she called me petite and small compared to my friends, and I remember something clicking in my head that signalled to me that I would never be quite small enough. I remember that memory so vividly, I was in my form room with was the room opposite the science labs where I would be taught PSHE and English and I would sit on the back row by the seat with the only yellow draw in the table and it had my name written on it and a sunflower next to it. And that was the moment I was told I was small but I was never small enough. 

I have always been in highly competitive schools, even since nursery. I was in the leading private prep school and now I am in the best international baccalaureate school and 5th best at GCSE's school in the United Kingdom, I guess its always been part of my nature. In the UK most children when they are 11 perform the 11+ examinations which tells you if you are able to get into a grammar school. I felt a lot of pressure to perform well and high achieving within these tests, however I now know it was intrinsic pressure yet it felt a huge burden over my shoulders. Results day came, and I sat in my mum's bed and she explained how I didn't pass and I wouldn't be attending a grammar school. I remember my thoughts flooded and I began to cry into my mum, I felt worthless, not good enough and I had thoughts over rush me and that was the time I self harmed for the first time. I never really knew what came over me, all the pressure was intrinsic and there was no external pressures upon me yet all I did was worry about exams at the mere age of 11 and I wish I could of taken it away. Yet if I knew that the reason I did do badly was on one section when I got full marks in the rest of the paper was because of an undiagnosed learning disability (dyslexia) it would of been very different. 

By the age of 12 my eating disorder had fully developed, I would be cutting out lunches at school, not having snacks etc etc when this really shouldn't be the life of a 12 year old. My school started to get worried about me and they made a staff sit with me at lunches to make sure I couldn't skip meals, and the lunch lady would monitor what I ate and when my mum came in for afternoon tea after weekly sports events the lunch lady would tell my mum what I was having during lunches etc. One day I remember my lunch lady saying "I barely eat enough to sustain a fly and that I was wasting away" and for some reason my head took this as a compliment and that I was succeeding yet in reality the truth it I was becoming more ill day after day. 

By this time, my eating disorder began developing into over exercise compulsions and taking laxatives at the age of 12. I would always sign up for every sports event I could take on, and go out for long walks and runs and do exercises in my room and the bathroom. This started giving me physical health problems such as chronodromalacia in my knees and causing me to pass out  quite a lot. On the other hand, I started forming a dependency on laxatives ( i am still a very angry that boots sold a 12 year old laxatives ) and took copious amounts due to urges from my eating disorder which really wasn't very healthy. However, when I was on a school trip my mum found my laxatives which I hid in my suitcase and thats when my mum found out I had a problem in regards to my relationship with food and I was sent to a service called CAMHS.

CAMHS is a service for people with all kinds of mental health problems between the ages of 0-18, I had a meeting with them in regards to my eating disorder which then escalated into talking about self harm. However, in England mental health services are very packed and there is not much space within them so therefore they gave me one session put a plan in place and then told me I didn't have to see them again which broke my heart being denied an opportunity of help.

At the age of 13 exams were coming up to get into a new school, I went to get into 6 school (one of them the grammar school but to come in at an alternate year.) I took the 13+ exam however knowing that only 2 people get in to the school I was trying for and knowing that I didn't have much chance however somehow I managed to get full marks in all the papers and got my place at that top grammar school (the one I'm currently in) and places in the other 5 schools. This made me so happy however I felt incredibly scared and lost moving from the school I had been for 13 years. 

I arrived as the new girl at my new school and I was in a very poor mental health state, there were issues going on in my family life and I found myself self harming several times a day, restricting and it wasn't a very good situation to be in. I knew some people in the popular group so I started hanging out with them but they ended up being not very nice to me and to some extent bullying on me and I started feeling very lost. I ended up doing things I regret and ended up having to speak to the student manager and be referred back to CAMHS.

This time CAMHS was a little better and helped me through times when I felt impulsive on certain actions so they started giving me psychology sessions to try understand the reasons behind the self harming, suicide ideation and the eating disorder however nobody (myself included) could understand why a 13 year old would be like this. After 6 or 7 weeks of the service they ended up discharging me again and I found myself very lost and continuing to struggle. 

In year 10 my mental health lead me to not being able to attend lessons and having panic attacks constantly, leading me to become in school very few amounts of time and losing my education. It really affected my hugely and my panic attacks lead me to becoming very distressed and I ended up being sent back to CAMHS (this time for the long haul), through the help of CAMHS I managed to get back more and more into school and I ended up having days where I was ok again. 

After a summer of being "okay" my mental health spiralled and I ended up having only 30% of attendance and when I did come into school my anxiety hit the roof and I started to dissociate and ended up running away and hiding and not being able to come into school. My eating disorder started hitting almost rock bottom and I had meetings with my school about what we could do to solve it and I ended up having hypoglycaemic seizures and ended up fainting (also linked with anxiety) as my body would just shut down and I would faint so much I wouldn't be able to be facilitated in school. 

During my GCSE mocks I ended up having 3 consecutive seizures and I ended up having to go to A&E where I was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder due to my fear of being in certain places and I had the subtype of "place avoidance OCD" and one of my places was hospitals. I believed irrational thoughts such as my family members were going to die and I ended up being restrained at the hospital several times and having to take sedatives to calm me down due to being in such a vulnerable position. Subsequently the next day I found myself having an inpatient treatment assessment for my eating disorder, OCD and anxiety. It was decided that I didn't need inpatient treatment at that time and it was sent back to CAMHS with a high intensive treatment plan. 

A week later, a person in my family very sadly passed away and my OCD took this news for the worse and on the day of her funeral I ended up being on the other side of a balcony when my mum stopped me from attempting. I thought it was my fault that she died, and that I killed her and I couldn't stop thinking over this for weeks and months after her very sad death.

I ended up having to leave school to go to a medical school just before my GCSEs started however I felt different to everyone else and mental health issues were not really understood there and it really affected me negatively. My physical health consequences deteriorated rapidly and I ended up fainting and having seizures so many times it was almost twice weekly occurrence I was taken to A&E. My health got so weak that I got taken out of the school that was meant to be accommodated any health problem and they ended up expelling me for my health problems. 

This caused me complete devastation and I ended up doing very stupid things and I got detained by the police for my own safety and then got told I would be going inpatient. The next week was full of inpatient assessments over and over again until I begged not to go and they gave me a final chance but if I repeated any dangerous actions I would not be able to say no and they ended up saying they would section me. 

This period of time was just before my GCSE's started and I had no where to do them however my old school out of the kindness of their hearts took me back in and I ended up doing my GCSEs there. That action showed me that their is possibility to fight and I started really pushing hard because of them. Things looked like they were looking up and for a while they really were. I got my GCSE results and they were not the best in my eyes because of being predicted all A*s at one point however knowing that everything I had been through I was happy with my 6A's and 4B's so it was ok in the end. I got back into my old school and I started to be doing okay again. I pushed through for my education. I was going out, socialising and living my life and being the true Rosie again. 

I finally felt ok again, however I didnt realise that anorexia was slowly pushing into my life more and more and that I didn't know how to stop it. At this time I was vegan, I had been vegan for around 8 months and I kept on getting compliments of how I had lost weight by friends and family members. I tried doing everything I could to hide my weight loss, I pretended I was recovered and I joked to myself that I was recovered. To everyone around me I was doing the best they've ever seen, I was in school whenever I should be, I was getting top grades again, I was generally happy again. However the truth was that I had fully relasped into anorexia.

I started to become scared of keeping food down and couldn't even keep fruit down and I developed anorexia binge purge subtype with over exercise compulsions. My CAMHS team became increasing worried and I ended up having two see them twice weekly. My team threatened to send me inpatient after they found out I fainted one time however I didnt think it would be real so this continued on for around a month how they kept telling me they would put me inpatient however i never thought it would happen. 

One night in October I felt pounding in my chest and I ended up having a suspected cardiac arrest and ended up having an ambulance called and they told me that my eating disorder would kill me if I didn't start fighting. They remained with me till 5am from 11pm to prevent me from heading to hospital. I promised them I would keep fighting however my eating disorder just kept getting worse and worse. 

My friends started to become worried about me, and they became increasingly and increasingly concerned about me. My family used to worry so incredibly much and they would stop me from going to the gym etc etc. My eating disorder took control over me and I began skipping school to exercise and then one day I stopped eating. 4 days after I stopped eating I attempted to run a marathon on a treadmill however camhs called me saying I had to see them, I didnt realise that they were about to send me inpatient so I went to this appointment. I got there and my whole team was sitting there and they were "Rosie you have 3 choices, we call the police and section you right now, you go in an ambulance to general hospital or you let your family take you (which threatened my OCD)" within this camhs appointment they did a lot of tests on me and they made me do the squat test and I ended up fainting and they called an ambulance and took me to hospital. 

General hospital was not a good time for me and my anorexia was so strong that I ended up not comply and I ended up not eating for 8 days in total. The staff were increasingly worried about me and during this time I wasn't allowed to stand up and had to use a wheelchair and loads of doctors kept coming to me threatening that they were going to section me. On the 26th of November I ended up having a section interview and ended up getting sectioned under the Section 2 of the Mental Health act.

This meant that by law I had to receive inpatient treatment and eat otherwise I would end up being nasal gastric tubed by force. I ended up refusing to be tube fed and made a deal with them that I would drink 6-8 ensures a day instead. Things ended up happening in A&E due to the distress that having that many calories caused me and I ended up being on 1:1 which was absolutely horrible. I ended up having machines connected with me and not being allowed to stand in the shower etc etc. My physical health got really serious and my heart got so weak that machines kept beeping and setting off alarms that I would have nurses come in in the middle of the night and try stabilise my health.

On the 30th of November 2016 I was sent to Huntercombe hospital maidenhead for refeeding from my eating disorder.  This was about 3ish hours from my home and is basically a hospital where you live at. I hated every moment of it. There were rules against my veganism and I had to eat animals products which was really not very good however I was on section so I had no choice and I remember crying down the phone to my friends and begging my mum to discharge me however I was detained by law so I had to be there. It was horrible and it wasn't a fun place to be. I had a 3 week holiday over the christmas period coming up which was not a good thing in their books which started on the 15th of December which was I was told never going to happen. However I was told that I was allowed to go if I gained a certain amount of weight by then, so I did and on the 15th of december my section was taken off, my 1;1 was taken off and my mum took me on holiday against medical advice. 

This holiday wasn't the best of holidays because my eating disorder was strong and it was a very hard holiday since my family didnt really understand the reality of eating disorders. My eating disorder turned completely and I ended up binging and purging throughout the whole holiday and returning to veganism even though that was strictly not allowed. 

I came back from my holiday and everything spiralled out of control. I became scared of every food that wasn't vegan, I couldnt eat it and I went back to where I started. I was so scared of gaining past the borderline healthy BMI when my target was 21 and I only managed liquid supplements. my unit kept sending me on home leaves when they knew it wouldn't go well and it got to a stage where my unit gave up on me and planned a discharge date as they told me that I wasn't getting better from this treatment. Everything was getting worse and my binging and purging spiralled completely out of control and I was completely lost. I wrote my doctor a 10 page letter begging for me not to be discharged and he told me that I was I had 5 more weeks of treatment and those weeks I had to turn things around. I fought so hard within those 5 weeks, harder then imagined. However, things kept getting worse and worse. My weight became really unstable and they were not happy with me. I decided to try start eating real food rather then rely on liquid supplements and they started giving me more and more vegan foods to eat which improved things and I began managing snacks if they were vegan. Things got harder and harder at home and I began coming home from home leave early and not being able to eat at home. Treatment plans kept flying around in care plans, however it was then agreed on the 7th of March 2016 that I would be discharged back in the community.

I was in shock and my inpatient experience is a whole other blog post but I thought now is the time to start fighting. My CAMHS team were so unhappy with the outcome and accused me of not wanting to get better when it was the extreme opposite and we ended up on a mutual discharge agreement as they were not helping me. I was left treatment less, things started going a bit downhill however I realised do I want to repeat all this process over and over again and I started fighting. Every day its really hard but its worth the fight.

Its been 3 months since I have been discharged, things are immensely difficult, and yes there have been points of relaspe within those periods of time however I have managed to take control. I decided to get a new team one that hopefully will be helpful to me and support me. Yes I am vegan but it helps me and Im not longer doing it to restrict, yes it may be an eating disordered behaviour however I am nourishing myself properly and living my life. I am going round universities and I am finding my new life in recovery from anorexia. I am full time in school, my mental health is stable, I am going on holidays etc etc.  One day I hope to say I have beaten anorexia, I know I haven't but Im so far from where I have been. 

Rosie 

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