A very hard week...

I don’t really know where to begin… this week on the ward has been pretty horrific to be honest. With an influx of new patients, for several days now there have been restraints and tube feeds; this doesn’t just happen once a day though, but about three times. It’s hard to explain what I’ve experienced this week to those who aren’t patients or staff on the ward. Whilst traumatic may sound over dramatic, I feel that it is in fact, an understatement.

The ward routine is as follows, we must all select and hand in our menu choices by Sunday evening, and once handed in we aren’t allowed to change them. When we then go into the dining room for each meal we know what we’ve ordered, and are expected to eat all that’s put in front of us. 

It’s okay to wobble, that’s only natural considering what we’re all battling with. So, if you really feel that you can’t manage the plate of food, or fail to start eating it within the set time frame, a meal replacement drink will be put in front of you instead. However, at times, for some, their anorexia takes such a tight grip that they don’t even feel able to drink the ensure leaving the staff no choice but to give the patient the nutrition via a nasal-gastric tube (NG tube). And, as I’m sure you can imagine, the thought of having an NG tube stuck down your nose, and thick beige liquid pumped down it, is not something anorexia takes lightly, so it inevitably creates a huge scene. And this week that’s happened multiple times a day.

Fighting anorexia on any level is hard, but when it physically fights back causing the patient refusing food to fight the staff, and have to be restrained, screaming… it’s on a whole new level. Several afternoons this week I’ve had to be evacuated from my room as the staff have had to get a patient from her room, and into the clinic room to be tubed with as little distress as possible for her, and all those around. But, when emergency alarms are going off, staff from the ward above are running down to provide backup, and the patient is uncontrollably screaming and crying, it’s hard to not let it affect you. 

This week has been very eye opening. Anorexia doesn’t just make people to deny themselves food, it convinces them to deny themselves life. It convinces them that the very people trying to help them are the enemies, that it is the only thing they can rely on. 

The culmination of refusals and continuous crying at the table from others led me to break down in floods of tears at dinner on Wednesday evening. Despite others around me not eating, I got on and ate my pasta, I thought ‘keep going Mima, you don’t want to end up chronically ill. You CAN do this!’. But then, when this hefty block of spiced cake, drowned in tepid custard was put in front of me, I reached my limit. I couldn’t do it. Not only do I hate fruit cake, but the enormity of it, and fact that many around me hadn’t even touched their main course tipped me over the edge. ‘No way in hell can you eat THAT!’ anorexia piped up. So I sat there, mind made up, overflowing with feelings, and anorexic thoughts whizzing around my mind at one hundred miles an hour. ‘Why did you even bother eating your main course? Clearly food here is an option. You definitely don’t need that huge lump in front of you… you don’t even like fruit cake, think how bad you’ll feel after, it’s not worth the aftermath.’

One of the lovely nurses opposite asked, ‘Jemima, are you okay?’, I managed to strain a very unconvincing ‘yes, I’m fine’. ‘Do you want a minute outside?’… I got up and couldn’t hold it in any longer, I burst into tears, and the kind nurse followed me out. Mima felt so angry at herself; she KNOWS that food is her medicine, and isn’t an option. However, anorexia sat smug on my shoulder, hissing, ‘see, I told you that you can’t recover, why are you trying? Just give up. Doesn’t it feel nice to know you’ve managed to avoid pudding… you should do this all the time, mmm feel that relief!’. The nurse tried to reassure me, ‘it’s normal to have ups and downs, recovery isn’t easy, beating anorexia isn’t easy, otherwise none of you would be here’. I just kept telling her what a failure I felt, the pain I could see it caused my family having to visit me in here, ‘I should just pull myself together, why the hell can’t I just get better? I’m such a failure, even at recovery; will I ever even get better?’. She just let the tears roll down my face, telling me that they know that I’m struggling. Just because I usually manage to sit and finish the food doesn’t mean they think I’m fine. In fact, she said, it makes them worry more; they prefer it when I show them how I really feel, when I let it out, ‘it’s pushing your feelings down that’s got you into this mess’.  

After managing to keep going, keep eating for the past five days whilst many around me struggled, I cracked, on Wednesday evening I couldn’t complete my meal. I think it was the combination of distress from what I had seen and heard on the unit, along with the immense pressure I was putting myself under; determined to do the ‘perfect recovery’ to not let others affect me. ‘Perfect recovery’… I know right? There’s no such thing. But in anorexia’s eyes everything has to be perfect, you, your food, your job, everything… and it is that that I’m having to wrestle with at the moment. No one’s perfect, there is no such thing as ‘perfect’, and the sooner I can allow myself to believe that, the closer I will be to beating this thing.