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Another Mother's Story, Sequel

By: Barbara

Yesterday was Valentine�s Day, 2001. I gave Kelsey a loving card, a silly balloon, and a small chocolate rose. She eats chocolate these days, my twelve-and-a-half year old daughter, just like any kid her age.

The road from her near-death and hospitalization eighteen months ago to today, when she�s in charge of her own diet and makes good food choices, has been winding and difficult. The whole family has faced often-uncomfortable challenges and truths in an effort to insure Kelsey would recover. However, none of us has been as brave and resolute as Kelsey herself who decided at some point to beat the disease that almost killed her, to live free and without the deadly restrictions and compulsions that anorexia forces upon its victims.

There were months during her recovery when she screamed at us, on and on and on, wordless screams of pain and rage at what was being done to her by us and her therapists and doctors. There were fallback times, times when she wouldn�t eat what all concerned (except Kelsey, of course) agreed was appropriate, and so the tube would go back in or she would have to see her counselor more often. For most of this time, her father and I watched every mouthful of food that went into our child, counting all the calories she needed each day in our heads, trying to reassure ourselves that she did, indeed, reach the minimum for that day. We constantly worried that she might turn to bulimia to purge her demons instead of facing them head-on with her counselors and doctors. She saw her counselor and doctor and nutritionist each week, all of us exulting as the number of visits per week steadily diminished over time. It was real proof she was getting better, we thought. She saw it as a reward, a lessening of the difference between her and the other kids with whom she was in school.

Today she�s a normal-looking, happy, healthy kid; no different from any other 7th grade girl you see giggling with her friends in the mall. These days, she�s completely responsible for her own diet and, mostly, her Dad and I don�t worry about her not eating. I�m not sure we�ll ever be totally free of the fear, though, that she�s again restricting her calories. That shadow lies lightly over our hearts at all times.

I have a special picture frame on the wall by my computer. It has spaces for wallet-sized pictures of Kelsey from kindergarten through 11th grades. They encircle an 8X10 sized place that will hold her 12th grade picture. Kelsey�s 5th and 7th grade pictures show a smiling, happy, healthy-looking girl. The 6th grade picture is different. In it, Kelsey is pinched and skinny and sick looking; that picture was taken just a couple weeks after Kelsey got out of the hospital, a few weeks after anorexia almost killed her. Sometimes I feel tears well up when I look at that 6th grade picture and know, again, how very close we were to losing her. Sometimes I feel angry, or lost, or hurt, when I see that picture, knowing the hell we all went through for her sake. Mostly, however, I feel a profound gratitude to have her back, whole and healthy, regardless of the cost along the way.

Girls can and do recover from anorexia. It takes work and dedication (and money, she adds cynically, because this is a damned expensive disease to treat even if you have good insurance) on the part of her family. However, recovery certainly asks no more from family members than it requires from the anorectic girl. The bottom line is that girls recover from anorexia. My girl has. Yours can too.

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I�d like to thank the very many people who have emailed me since the posting of my Story 14 months ago. Many of the messages contained words of aching despair and panicky need. Through them, I�ve come to realize that there is a wild, desperate need for public information about this most-hushed of diseases. Mothers and fathers and sisters and boyfriends and aunts and stepparents and friends have contacted me asking where to go for information, who to ask for help, how to pay for it, how they can help the girl, who to tell. Every one of these family members and friends were aching and in pain as watched their special girl grow thinner, and were growing angry and afraid as she closed to them, refusing to discuss her eating habits. Every one of them was confused and beginning to cast about somewhat frantically for help.

There were also messages of quiet hope and touching sympathy as well, messages from girls and young women who were recovering or recovered, who were picking up the pieces of their lives and moving on, stronger for the ordeal by fire that anorexia foists upon its survivors. It was messages from these young women that I read over and over during the bad times with Kelsey, during the times when I wept with despair, wondering if she would want to recover enough to continue taking the hard steps necessary to the process.

The messages were an unanticipated bonus to the writing of my original Story. I thank you for sharing bits of your lives with me.

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If my daughter can get better then yours can, too.

Be well.
Barbara, Kelsey�s mother
[email protected]

©2001 Barbara. Reprinted with Permission.

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