I’m not dead

It’s been almost a year since I posted last. I was in school, doing my pre-reqs for nursing during most of that time. That ended mid-September. I had been deep in my eating disorder for several months and my outpatient team decided they couldn’t treat me anymore, I needed a higher level of care. By the time I went to get my medical clearance for treatment, I was severely dehydrated, anemic, had low potassium, had a Mallory Weiss tear, and my liver and kidneys were starting to fail.

Until I received the news from my medical clearance, I had thought I was impervious to complications from my eating disorder. Yes, I’ve had chronic low potassium and anemia, but I thought that was the extent to which I would be affected. To hear that my liver and kidneys were failing was a cold splash of water on my face, a cruel wakeup call.

I admitted to a local partial hospitalization program on October 4th. It’s a 7-day-a-week, 10-hour-a-day program. It’s intense and challenging. I’ve been in it for 8 weeks now and I’m making progress. Before going back to treatment I was purging up to 26 times a day. Now I’ve gone 2 weeks without purging. I will probably move to their intensive outpatient program in a couple weeks. That starts out at 7 days a week from 10-3:30, then 5 days a week, then finally 3 days. I’m both looking forward to and nervous to transition. I know slips are a normal part of recovery, but I’m so scared of falling back into my old habits. I really want recovery to stick this time.

I would write more but it’s almost 2am and I have to be up in about 4 hours so I will try to sleep now.

Thank you for reading this and I hope you have a great day.