Loading ...I speak as the mother of a young woman who died after eight years adrift with severe anorexia-bulimia in a medical system that basically ignored this most deadly of the mental illnesses. …
Within the mainstream of the medical system, Danielle often faced hostility from her medical treatment providers. She was treated as if this was some kind of wilful teenage thing, some kind of hissy fit that she was having. Not true. … Every bite, every step was a genuine struggle for her.
In addition, she did not receive care for anything not deemed part of the problem. Her bones deteriorated to the point where she was off the chart, but she was not eligible for the bone medicines because they only went to 65-year-olds. …
She did not receive use of the air bed, although they brought one into her room in the hospital in the hour before she died to relieve the pain of the bones and the muscles which had all withered so that she had no range of motion. …
One sarcastic nurse said to us, “Well, what exactly do you expect of us?” and I said, “I would like to find a cognitive behavioural therapist for Danielle and a psychiatrist who could work different medications until he found the right one for her severe suicidal impulses five days every month.” The nurse looked at me and said, “You are being absolutely unrealistic.” …
Danielle was turned away three times at emergency rooms when she went there scared that she might act on these suicidal impulses, because she wanted to live. It was not an attention-getting thing. They laughed at her plans. … One time, five days later, she had a good plan and she overdosed. I found her.
When she was in Toronto for two years waiting for her turn that never came up, at our expense in a rented room, she would go to the hospital emergency and stay between the double doors, because there she could wait safely until the impulse passed. She knew it would pass, but she had to be safe until it did. —Carolyn Mayeur
