Psych Review

I had my review with the mental health team at 2pm today. 
They are concerned with the weight loss and that anorexia has taken over my every thought and behavior. 
They have referred me on to REDS (regional eating disorder services) 
I told the team that I can't do all of it, reds, group, 1 on 1 and homework and work and life. It's too overwhelming and I can't do it. So I'm taking a break from DBT therapy and group and going to focus on the eating disorder.
My key worker phoned me today. I have an appoint with the ED doctor on the 23rd to be assessed. Last time they assessed me (April of last year) they told my psych at the time I was too borderline personality to be accepted into a ed program. I'm so scared I'm not sick enough for their help. And it's still 2 weeks away which is also scary! 
I have to go to my gp once a week for monitoring which is also scary :( 
I don't know that I can do this. I hate anorexia but I love her all the same :(

The BIG one

So I had my big meeting today – the one where the two teams working with me to try and help me create normality to my life met and discussed me like I was a the latest “off the press”

The original Taylor Centre doctors – my key worker Joanne, my psychologist Trish and my psychiatrist Markus met with the REDS (regional eating disorder service) – Dr Kac (physical doc) and the psychiatrist (can’t remember his name but I liked him) sat at this big table and at 1pm me and Donna joined them.

They asked how I thought I was going and then put the options out there.

The options being either

* I get discharged from all care, for now. Knowing that I can go back anytime, and can put my hand up for help whenever I need/want and they are there. Or *option 2 being I get motivated and they work together to help me recover from anorexia and borderline personality disorder – 2 of the most difficult mental illnesses to overcome alone let alone together they pointed out.

I was open and honest with my response (I thought) I made them aware that I do lack motivation because the fear of gaining weight and what that means for me – hating myself more and more so much that I go back to self harming and suicidal tendencies, not going out with friends and just feeling like a lost fat soul strolling around numb to the world. I want the motivation but I am terrified cos I know what the road to recovery looks like and the past 2 years have been hard and now that I am feeling good and happy and having fun why would I want to stop that for a dark tough road which as much support as I have I ultimately have to walk alone.

I told them option 2 is pretty much the same as what I was doing but I have an added person –a dietician and although they insisted the dietician would help me to gain weight slowly and at my own pace so that I could adjust slowly I repeated the previous year’s attempts  with the dietician started in the same way – and I trusted them and believed them, only to be my usual self and start to think I was doing well and things were going ok-ish so I ate better and ate chocolate and ice cream and gained weight and freaked out and purged then self harmed .... The 1 hour appointment with the dietician once a week sounds great but what about the other 167 hours in the week. How do I cope with the stresses of work, the social scenes and life in general?

They determined me not sick enough for inpatient. Apparently 45 kgs and a BMI of 15.6 is not sick enough to go inpatient and unless I drop further and hit 43 kgs then they won’t consider it.

I don’t want to get sick enough that I am forced into hospital and I told them this but their PLAN does not stir motivation and invoke hope that I will get better.

Something different needs to happen. I would go inpatient volunterally if i could take the time off work and off life in general.

I hate being trapped but i love it all the same- how messed up is that!?!

I wish i could feel thin, feel beautiful and be loved

My mum’s friend who came with me so I had a voice of reason to speak for me said that she has watched me slowly kill myself and that the last 4 months I have shrunk and she is scared.

So now i have to decide.......
I am going to catch up with mum on the weekend so see what she thinks and then talk to my boss and decide.
I know i am not going to just continue with the DBT group and see a dietician once a week so she can make me fat! but the thought of being discharged and having NO support scares me as well :/

Tweaker

Wide awake and buzzing yet tired to the bone
A million thoughts are racing through me 
Do you see me all alone?

Who can love a hallow self when the self does not love the hallow?

What happened to my goals in life? When did this night turn day?
What is it I am searching for or am I simply forever running away?

What A Week!

Weeks been pretty emotional and hard to be honest... 

I had a colposcopy appoint on tues (for my abnormal smear)- they had to take a biopsy cos cells abnormal and waiting to find out results of that - 50/50 chance of cervical cancer :/

Tuesday night i hung out with my mate Matt, who borrowed some money and now i can't get a hold of him. Didn't get any sleep!

Wednesday I worked 6 hours - then went out with friends, made money selling and got home bout 5am - for 3 hours sleep

Thursday I had a meeting at REDS (regional eating disorder service) it was an hour and half long and they asked me all sorts of questions about my thoughts around eating, weight, everything. Have an appoint with another dr on tues next week for a full medical to make sure physically I'm not in any danger. :/

Then the 3 people from REDS (psychiatrist and ot from thurs and dr from tues) meet with my old team (psychologist, psychiatrist and key worker) to discuss me and what I need. 

Thursday night i went to my cousins house with mates, she got so drunk and was being really annoying and silly and then was hitting me which was painful (she has since apologised) I got home about 4.30am for about 2.5 hours sleep just in time for another day at work on friday

Friday -I went to my uncles funeral. There was a lot of laughter which was nice but it was still so sad. He passed on Sunday so suddenly from a heart attack. Was my mums eldest brother and 1st brother to pass away. 

Then I was going to have quiet night and in some ways I kinda did. Yet somehow it was 5am and I was not asleep. Was chilling at mine with a friend, did some d*ugs and slept from 7am-11am

and now it's saturday - i went to lunch with family and it was ok -ate some seafood but felt so full and as i was leaving mums husband said to me - "make sure you keep it in you" i was like WTF and he tried to make me pinky promise not to bring it back up!
way to ruin lunch

I don't think i am doing anything tonight - sat night in, house to myself and sleep!
I am feeling so ill and tired and grumpy. I wish i had it in me to go out cos i need to sell some stuff but oh well.... CBA

October Update

Here is the latest on IT ALL.....

I am still on part time at work for this week as i went back to the dr last thursday and my weight had dropped to "critical"  my blood pressure, sugar, calcium and phosphate were too low or something.... This is week 3 of part time hours so the bank account has taken a huge hit and i've had to cancel the trip to brisbane in Dec. I am now doing the Sat to Mon with mum and brad is the same.... sucks but i guess it's just the way it has to be. no one else to blame but myself. :(

i am going to call the doc tomorro though as I have gained weight (2 whole kgs) m back to 45kgs (99lbs)> BMI 15.57.....  hopefully will be ok for me to go back to work full time! Part time is fine but i cannot live off it! :/

It's hard - i constantly feel so fat and horrible but i need to be ok to work!!

mum organised a meeting with this specalist guy last week - it was me, her, dad and this dr and i had a chat to him for 1/2 hour without the parents there and then he explained stuff to them so they could understand more.I think they found it quite useful which was good.
I guess they (and me and everyone else) is over all of this and can't see why i'm not getting better.....

Mum's brother passed away yesterday - Uncle Gary .... so that is a huge shock to everyone (especially nana) as he was relatively healthy (compared to the other brother who is the dying of emphysema)
The funeral is on Friday which is going to be so hard. He is the first of the brothers to pass and mum was very close to him.


Work has been stressful - i'm not supposed to say anything but there has been a case of identity fraud - and it was one of my candidates who i registered way back in May and she has been working ever since for a credit card company, creating credit cards for fake people. I had an hour long call with a solicitor from the legal team of Manpower in Sydney today which was hard work. She was creating a timeline of events and gathering information for a case. I feel totally responsible as i had no idea, but aparantly she has been doing this for years and even her 2 previous employers had no idea. Still is shitty. And really bad timing. My boss has been really good and i've broken down severall times at work because of it - she is very patient and continues to remind me i AM doing a good job and this was NOT my fault and nohting i could have done would have prevented this.
Alll we can do now is wait for the client to decide what to do next, wether they want to try and get some of their money back that they lost (to her wages mainly) or what :s
They have been very supportive the last few weeks and i think i have been very lucky to still have a job.

Have cut right back on the drugs and although have had some massive nights out .... i am limiting myself to (mainly) Thurs and Friday's (i then crash out early on sat which stops me going out haha)  I have limited what and how much i'm doing .... I am quite happy to be around people and not have any which feels pretty good :)
Although in saying that, i still quite like going to work high as a kite LOL

I have a meeting next Tuesday (23rd) with REDS (regional eating disorder service) for an assessment with the doctor there. It's with the same dr i seen in April of last year who told my psychologist at the time that the ed was caused by the BPD and if we continued with the DBT therapy and worked on the BPD issue the ED would improve ..... how wrong was  he.

I no longer see trish (psych) or go to DBT group ... which is weird. but hopefully after next tuesday there will be a plan in place and if not then there is always the specalist guy that i met last week.(not that i realy liked him)
I said to mum that i appreciated her doing that but she can't spring things like that on me. I am 25 now and i am trying to help myself and be independent and get well on my own without my mummy or daddy swooping in and trying to fix things. I love them both but they cannot fix me (as much as i wish and they wish they could)


dad's been really good too - at first he just didn't understand it and turned up and my house one morning and almost literally thought he was going to attempt to drag me out of the house to put food in me (thank god he didn't) he has paid for me to have another Reiki session tomorro arvo with his friend. it's very weird but balances the chakra's which i hope helps :)

I have an appointment at Greenlane hospital tomorro afternoon - i am having a colposcopy again as my last smear was abnormal again (same as last year) :s I am nervous about that too.....

Everything seems to fall apart all at the same time !!
" when it rains, it pours"

Explaining Ana (letter to my dad)

Explaining Ana ...

I wanted to write a few things down and hopefully clear your confusion even if just a little.
This eating disorder isn’t new to me but it is to you and I can fully understand why you don’t get it. I mean no one really “gets” and you can’t get it unless you’ve lived it.

It’s not about food, well it wasn’t to start with, it’s about control. When things aren’t going well/are out of balance in my life, I’ve needed to feel like I am in control of something. I want to feel good about myself, like myself, be happy with who I am.
I don’t know when it started or how or why…. But it’s triggered by different things and different stressors and now it’s just a habit and my life.

I remember in high school, I was always the one people would come to if they wanted advice on food, how to eat healthy, what to eat, calories, fat, exercise …..
When you and mum broke up, my car accident and other things happened – controlling my food, counting my calories and having something to focus on rather than the cr*ppy stuff and the emotions behind events made me feel better and made me feel good about myself.
Moving to the UK and living with Kelly and co. was the best thing I did – before I went away I was losing weight and struggling but I didn’t realise I had a problem, Kelly helped me realise that i did in fact have a problem and she helped me re-focus my attention away from calories and weight and onto traveling. Those 2 years while I was away, Kelly helped me so much – don’t know how exactly, can’t pin point what she did or how but it helped me to re-create myself and my identity as a traveller and I was doing so well, then coming home and finding everything the same I lost that feeling and struggled to settle back in.
My friends were all different, everything was changing and it was hard… so I started counting calories again, knowing full well what I was doing wasn’t right and that what I was doing was disordered but it made me feel better about myself and made it easier to cope with everything on a day to day basis. And I thought I could stay on top of it.
I go in cycles – I restrict for a while, then hit breaking point and start eating again and that then leads to purging my food and then I feel worse about myself and I self-harm, but then I hate that so much so start to try and get better and gain weight but hate myself so start restricting again.
After a visit to hospital one night last February I was referred to Manukau mental health team where they initially diagnosed me with borderline personality disorder because of the fact I self-harmed, had trouble with relationships and had such extremities of emotions… I was under the team in Manukau and was doing the DBT therapy and going to a group on Wednesday afternoons and starting to see an improvement in the managing emotions and relationships but not so much in the eating …… then I moved to town and was transferred to the Taylor centre where I carried on the DBT therapy… having group on Tuesday mornings and one on one with a psychologist every week to teach me how to manage my emotions and not run from them. During this time the “professionals” all decided that the eating disorder was a result of the BPD (borderline personality) and that if they treated the BPD the eating would improve.
Then I broke my arm – which I think has triggered the big relapse. I was focused solely on squash and doing so well, and breaking my arm put a damper on everything… Now they think the BPD is in fact a result of the eating disorder and so I have been referred on to REDS (regional eating disorder service) to get serious help with ONLY the eating disorder and hopefully life will be normal.

I  have an immense fear of gaining weight … as I say it never started out being about the weight and how I looked but now it is. I only wanted to feel good and be in control of my life and now the eating, the fear, the need to be thin, but feeling so fat and disgusting controls me. It’s a little voice in my head that as much as I hate it, I also love it. It feels like a friend to me in a world of madness sometimes. When things go wrong I know I have something to fall back on and rely on to make me feel good, yet also feel worse.

I had been doing so well this year, eating ok but not liking myself at all and now that I have lost weight I feel good, I am liking myself more when I am losing weight, yet I never feel thin.

I have managed to hide this very well from a lot of people for a number of years. 
This is no-one’s fault but telling me to eat something isn’t helping – it’s like telling someone with depression to cheer up, or someone with a broken arm to harden up. It feels like an addiction sometimes, I am addicted to losing weight!
This is a mental illness and I have to work through things one step at a time and hopefully this referral with REDS is the start of the recovery process.

I hope this sheds some light for you…. I wanted to try and explain this in person but I know that I would probably just end up crying and not saying what I wanted to say.

I will be ok, I always am 

Lots of love 
Amz

25 Birthdays Survived

When you're 16 you have this idea in your head of what life will be like when you are 25. The job you will be in, the amazing boyfriend/fiancé/husband you will have and how grown up 25 is.
Now I'm here I just don't know.
My job is in jeopardy cos of my ill health, my boss wants me to take time off to go into a treatment place or hospital to get over my eating disorder, no one at work knows about the fact I'm smoking a class drugs every week, sometimes every night, one week I even lied and instead of going to dbt group I went to his house to get high.
My family and majority of friends don't know about the drugs which makes it harder to be around them since I'm out for weekends at a time.
My "new" friends don't know about the eating disorder which means I'm then wearing a mask around them too.
I'm wearing masks to keep myself together but really I'm falling apart.
I don't have any if many real friends, I've been ripped off by many and used and hurt and all I want to go is lose weight and be thin.

Happy 25th right? Seen 4 friends who all eventually left, my close girl who I been seeing a lot of turned on me and sent me nasty txt msgs, didn't eat or get drunk, just a little high but could def sleep.

Had 112 people wish me happy birthday on facebook yet i Feel so alone

Septemberrrrrrrrrrrrr

I weigh 46kgs that's 101lbs. 
In the past month, nearly 2 I've spent more money on drugs than I have on food. 
I'm having heart palpitations every day, all day an sometimes they hurt. 
In the past 7 days I've done drugs every day, I've slept more than 5 hours once and I've eaten about 300 calories all up. 
I keep telling myself that I'm ok, that it's not that bad, that for once I'm going out and having fun but as I sit in bed on Tuesday night nearly half 12 in the morning, alone, aching and hungry getting high I'm wondering where this is going? How does this end? How long can I continue this? 
My boss has said that if I get put into hospital and it's for an extended period of time then my job may be in jeopardy, she said the power may be out of her hands and out of her control. No I do not want to lose my job but I also don't want to gain weight and be unhappy. 
I like that doing drugs is making me skinny, I like that I can do it before work and no one knows. I like that on the weekends I go out dancing for 2 or 3 night straight. I like all the fun new friends I've made and continue to make. 
This guy Neil who I've been hanging out with said to me tonight that I am on to it and that I am all good. I can't help but silently think "am I really or am I just putting on a big front to the world so they don't take it all away from me"
I've just made a new friend, he is not a mid man or a buyer he is the real deal, the big guy in the game. Today instead of going to DBT group I went to his house for an hour and a half and smoked up a storm, got high and went back to work. 
I had fun. 
Playing squash this evening however, not as fun. I have no energy, I can't hit the ball and I can't run around cos I can't breathe and my heart hurts too much. Afterwards there was dinner consisting of roast chicken, salad and bread. I ate a few forkfuls of chicken and plain lettuce and hated every second of it. I was/am so hungry my tummy is loudly telling everyone around me so yet I HATE that I have to put food into me! 
I am not motivated to go to therapy or even try and practise the skills simply because I feel ok, I'm having fun and my emotions are suppressed cos I'm losing weight and doing drugs that numb me. It's a good feeling for me (but I realise it's not actually a good thing)
Again I suddenly wonder.... How does this end?

Life right now

I weigh 46kgs that's 101lbs.
In the past month, nearly 2 I've spent more money on drugs than I have on food.
I'm having heart palpitations every day, all day an sometimes they hurt.
In the past 7 days I've done drugs every day, I've slept more than 5 hours once and I've eaten about 300 calories all up.
I keep telling myself that I'm ok, that it's not that bad, that for once I'm going out and having fun but as I sit in bed on Tuesday night nearly half 12 in the morning, alone, aching and hungry getting high I'm wondering where this is going? How does this end? How long can I continue this?
My boss has said that if I get put into hospital and it's for an extended period of time then my job may be in jeopardy, she said the power may be out of her hands and out of her control. No I do not want to lose my job but I also don't want to gain weight and be unhappy.
I like that doing drugs is making me skinny, I like that I can do it before work and no one knows. I like that on the weekends I go out dancing for 2 or 3 night straight. I like all the fun new friends I've made and continue to make.
This guy Neil who I've been hanging out with said to me tonight that I am on to it and that I am all good. I can't help but silently think "am I really or am I just putting on a big front to the world so they don't take it all away from me"
I've just made a new friend John, he is not a middle man or a buyer he is the real deal, the big guy in the game. Today instead of going to DBT group I went to his house for an hour and a half and smoked up a storm, got high and went back to work.
I had fun.
Playing squash this evening however, not as fun. I have no energy, I can't hit the ball and I can't run around cos I can't breathe and my heart hurts too much. Afterwards there was dinner consisting of roast chicken, salad and bread. I ate a few forkfuls of chicken and plain lettuce and hated every second of it. I was/am so hungry my tummy is loudly telling everyone around me so yet I HATE that I have to put food into me!
I am not motivated to go to therapy or even try and practise the skills simply because I feel ok, I'm having fun and my emotions are suppressed cos I'm losing weight and doing drugs that numb me. It's a good feeling for me (but I realise it's not actually a good thing)
Again I suddenly wonder.... How does this end?

The Flatties

Flat situation..
For the past 6 weeks 2 out of 3 flatties have been really weird around me, not talking to me and avoiding me and leaving the room when I come in...
Then this arvo I get this from 1 of them "Hey Amy, I've been thinking about the flat situation all weekend. I'm really not comfortable in the flat at the moment and know the girls feel the same way. This is due to a number of different things but mainly the blatant disrespect you have for others in the house currently.Something needs to change and I don't think it should lead to us having to move out." 
I come home to chat and its like 3 against 1 gang up on Amy time. 1 of them who has been normal with me stayed relatively neutral but basically they don't like my friends, they don't want people here during the week and the even talked about my eating issues- saying they've noticed I've lost weight and the people I hang out with obv don't care cos they don't try and help.

I told them yes I have people or at least 1 person here every night cos at the moment I don't wanna be home by myself. I don't like sitting around in the lounge with them watching tv. I need social distraction, something to do (play around on laptop w music etc) and just cos my friends are party people doesn't mean they don't care. They bring me food all the time - I just don't eat it. I've got enough people trying to "fix" me it's nice to be around people where my ed isn't the first topic of conversation. 
I told them no disrespect has happened they just need to speak up and tell me if my music is too loud for them. I can't read minds and as I've been working part time I have no concept of sleep and time. 

I txt my mum the txt I got and she sent a very blunt reply. 

The way it ended with the flatties was that I will keep the weekdays quiet but I'm not telling people NOT to come over, I pay rent so have a right to have friends here. But they need to communicate better (like the 3rd girl does) and speak up rather than let these things build up!