People ask why I write about the painful subject of my daughter’s anorexia and eventual death. I’ve explained a few reasons in past articles, but there’s one more.
You see I just can’t stand that my loved daughter has become a statistic of the disease of anorexia. And I want people to learn, as I’m sure all moms would, that this young woman had a mom and dad, a sister, aunts and uncles, grandparents, friends and enemies, talents and shortcomings, loves and hates. In other words a life, not a perfect life, but what could have been a wonderful life. I want people to see Meg as a complex human being not a statistic. That’s why I write.
To continue, after losing over thirty lbs in her senior year of high school, Meg entered college looking great at 126 lbs. She came home for Thanksgiving weighing 114 lbs; came home for Christmas weighing 108.
During the Thanksgiving holidays, we talked to Meg about losing so much weight. But since she lost another six pounds from Thanksgiving break to her Christmas break, which amounted to a mere three weeks, she obviously hadn’t listened. I was so worried that I made an appointment with a psychologist who specialized in anorexia. Her face expressionless and her body tense with anger, Meg begrudgingly went to the appointment with me. But there was a problem. Meg turned eighteen the April before she started college: This seemingly minor detail became a major stumbling block during Meg’s seventeen year battle with anorexia.
Since Meg was eighteen, she could be seen by the doctor alone, and of course she chose to do so. And I had no legal right to stop her; at that point, I didn’t feel I should after all this was her first appointment for anorexia. Meg came to her appointment dressed in a fairly short skirt, thick tights and a long-sleeved sweatshirt. Now like me, Meg holds a good deal of her weight in her legs which were quite visible; nevertheless, her skinny arms and ribs were not. As I’ve said before, Meg was smart, smarter than I realized. The camouflage dressing trick went unnoticed by me for a while. In addition, Meg always portrayed herself, to others, as a capable young woman who has no problems except a mother who worries. After her appointment, the doctor said he really didn’t think we should be concerned about Meg. He informed me that many college freshmen either gain or lose weight while adjusting to their new lives. Obviously, the psychologist was deceived by her dress and her confident manner. So much for catching anorexia early.
Looking back, this is another example of the “insightful” advice we received from the medical profession about Meg’s overweight and underweight conditions. When Meg was overweight, and I asked her doctor if she might be depressed, he acted as if I’d said a dirty word. Now Meg had lost over fifty lbs in a year and a half—the first thirty she needed to lose, the last twenty she did not. But I should not be concerned. I sound as if I’m being hard on the medical profession, and I do understand that this happened to Meg eighteen and a half years ago when anorexia wasn’t making headlines in newspapers or being splashed over the covers of celebrity magazines as it is today. Yet this doctor claimed to specialize in anorexia.
Still when I researched anorexia, I found that the disease has been around for centuries. So I want to know: Why is there no cure or effective treatment for a disease that’s been around for hundreds of years? Could it be that after people have starved themselves long enough, the disorder becomes a mental disease that defies a cure, or is it because it’s considered a women’s disease or a combination of both?
It will be interesting to see if more funds become available for research to find a cure; a successful treatment; a gene that could be turned off; a stem cell that could be developed into self love, self acceptance, self confidence—something—as the number of young men dying from anorexia increases. In fact, studies done by the University of Toronto and Harvard University Medical School found that the number of young men now suffering from anorexia is much higher than reported by the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders. It’s horrible to think that we have to wait for either more young men or young women to die of anorexia before something is done. Do I sound angry? I am.
Nevertheless, looking back from this painful too late place, I now think there were other problems that contributed to Meg’s condition in addition to the psychological scars caused from being overweight in high school. For example, when Joe and I left Meg at college for the first time I feel there were signs of separation anxiety. But isn’t that normal? As Joe and I were about to head back to Virginia, Meg dejectedly said, “You’ll always have each other. Who will I have?” There was a reason we called Meg the drama queen (It may seem strange to mock my deceased daughter, but we were a family that loved silly nicknames, teasing and laughing, and since Meg had taken drama lessons from the age of four, that was her nickname. And she was proud of it.). Of course we told her she would always have us, and all our family who live in nearby Rhode Island. We explained, again, that her family was counting on seeing a lot of her while she lived in Boston. And now her sister, Kae, would be able to visit her. Then speaking as mom I said, “Your job in college is to find out what you want to do with your life. You’ll find wonderful friends like you always have in all the other places we’ve moved. It will just take a little time.”
Yet after her first week at the university, Meg called home, and she said, “Last week I had to be in by one o’clock, but now nobody knows or cares when I come in or what I’ve been doing.” She went on to complain about her roommate and other students in the dorm coming in at all hours and in bad condition. Then it suddenly dawned on me; as rebellious and querulous as Meg had been in high school, she was actually a good kid. She had very little trouble with the big four: drinking, drugs, driving, or sex (that I found out about). But now I feel that the amount of freedom that college afforded Meg frightened her although she’d never admit it.
Nevertheless at university, Meg didn’t have her parents there to fill in the gaps as we always did through each military move. Now she had to handle things on her own. But isn’t that part of becoming an adult? Should we have stepped in prematurely and brought her home? Certainly during her senior year of high school, she had greatly matured: improving her grades, looking for scholarships. She even took a self-defense class so she’d be prepared to live city life; besides, Meg wanted a city college like her sister who went to school in New York City. So we thought she was ready. However, when she got to college, Meg couldn’t join in with her college friends who were experimenting with substances that might cause her to lose control. Because ever since Meg lost weight in high school and was then bombarded by the DON’T GAIN THE FRESHMAN FIFTEEN signs in college, Meg was all about control. As she said, “I’m never going to gain the FRESHMAN FIFTEEN.” And she never did.
So what excuse do you give your college friends when they ask you to party with them on a Friday night? I’m sorry. I can’t go out and get blitzed or stoned with you tonight: I have to study.
As a result, Meg became an excellent student. Yet what I didn’t discover until her sophomore year was that Meg wasn’t always studying instead of going out with her friends and indulging in the high caloric activity of drinking. And she was not going to the movies.
Meg went to the gym.
Meg didn’t come home for Spring Break. She said she had to work. So the next time we saw her was when she walked through the kitchen door, home from college for the summer. I still have a clear vision of this moment. The windows were opened, and there was a lovely breeze billowing the kitchen curtains. I was cooking Meg’s favorite meal, my from-scratch Italian sauce and meatballs.
Turning from the stove-top and catching sight of Meg, my heart seemed to suddenly expand ever so slightly. This always happens when I see one of my grown daughters for the first time after a long absence. I’m incredulous that I had a part in creating this lovely person, an adult that was now out in the world. Meg wore khaki shorts and a pink cotton, long-sleeved sweater. She was too thin but still lovely to me: her grey-green eyes a melding of Joe’s blue eyes and my brown ones; her dark brown, wavy hair definitely my mother’s; her full eyebrows from Joe’s side; and her predisposition for addiction from both sides. Poor Meg.
Meg was home for the summer. We’d have a wonderful time.
People who think they know how things will go are often fooled. Sounds like a fortune cookie.
www.nytimes.com/2000/06/25/health/thinner-the-male-battle-with-anorexia. http://hubpages.com/hub/Male-Anorexia