A Dancer's Struggle

  I had never been so nervous or afraid, but soon I would find out I was surrounded by the best people. In August of 2021, I started intensive outpatient treatment at Evolve Healing. Evolve is an eating disorder treatment center. My first “technical” day was meeting with my treatment team and evaluating what kind of care I would be getting. This check in process typically takes most of the day and your parent or guardian is with you. Also on this day I wasn’t allowed to see any  of the other patients I would be in treatment with. The following day, August 5th, was my first official day of treatment. Since I was in IOP my day started at 3pm. I would walk in and check myself into the front desk and fill out a paper everyday that asked how I was feeling. Next, I would meet the PHP kids in the dining hall for afternoon snack. I remember not knowing what snack I was going to be given on the first day, or if I even had any say in it. This created some anxiety for me, because I wasn’...

  I was in the middle of my daily mile long walk when I got a call. Little did I know this call would have been the one to save my life. It was the summer time, and I hadn’t admitted to having an eating disorder. My parents and doctors put me on a 3,000 calorie diet. They were confused as to why I hadn’t gained a pound. I wasn’t though. I was pretending to eat, throwing away my food when they weren’t looking, and over exercising . At this point, I was at my lowest weight ever and lowest point in my life. My family medicine doctor back in May had suggested a treatment program for eating disorders. I told her no because, “I didn’t have an eating disorder”. She had told me, “I am putting you on the waitlist because I am scared for you. You are dying”. Fast forward a month later it was the week leading up to my dance nationals. The treatment center had called my parents saying there was a spot open for me starting on Monday. If I didn’t take the spot, they would give my place to someon...

  It was Christmas Eve and I was begging my parents to go to the gym. Last year, I had an unhealthy obsession with running. I would run to earn food and to be skinner. The night before Christmas day I was asking my parents over and over again if I could go on Christmas, even though it is a holiday, I wanted to go to the gym and run. After pleading all night they eventually agreed. Christmas morning at 7:00am before eating breakfast or opening presents, they took me to the gym. I proceeded to run three miles. The reason I had wanted to work out so badly was so I could then enjoy my Christmas day and not feel guilty for eating food.  In reality, I wasn’t close to eating enough food to fuel my body in the first place. When we were done at the gym I went home and had a piece of toast. There was no butter or any spread on it. It was simply just a piece of toasted bread. Running and the thoughts in my mind to be the ideal image of “skinny” were controlling my life. Did I actually wa...

  I was trapped in an invisible ice cube everyday. I couldn’t escape the feeling of being frozen. When I was heavily using behaviors in my eating disorder, I was malnourished as you know. This came with consequences that I couldn’t flee even if I tried. There was zero fat on my body at this point. I was a walking skeleton. My body had no warmth to protect me or generate heat. I felt extremely cold 24/7. This wasn’t your ordinary feeling of cold. It’s not like standing outside in the snow with no clothes, it is dreadful. My bones would constantly hurt from the pain. The coldness I felt would never go away unless I was sitting under my electric blanket that could produce its own heat for me. This point in my life I wasn’t happy. I was suffering all day everyday. No one around me could relate to the immense amount of pain my body would feel from freezing. It got to the point where I would have panic attacks before going to school because I just could not endure the agony my body was g...

  I remember walking away from the kitchen thinking, “Whew I didn’t get caught.” In the depths of my eating disorder, I was lying to everyone around me. My parents and doctors thought I just had a high metabolism that suddenly kicked in. The truth is I wasn’t eating. I would wake up every morning before anyone else and “make my breakfast’’. This included emptying a Boost plus bottle down the drain to look like I drank it. Getting utensils dirty and sprinkling some oatmeal in a bowl to look like I had eaten. By doing this, it was so mentally tasking to keep a lie hidden inside of me from every possible human. I had no one to talk to but myself, and the eating disorder. After pretending to eat “breakfast,” I would go back to sleep until lunch. If I was alone for lunch, I would do the same thing and leave some crumbs on a plate and dirty some more silverware to make it as if I had consumed the food I needed to. I was filling the void in my head of eating. These actions continued on f...

     I remember being on stage and telling myself to push through and that I am fine. That was a total lie. It was recital weekend and we were performing multiple shows a day. I was dancing throughout most of the production. I was in my eating disorder and I had barely eaten anything at all that week. On the days we had recital I went all day only eating an apple. I wouldn’t eat any other food those days until after I was done dancing. When the shows were over I would go home to eat dinner, the first real food I had eaten all day. It was 9:30 at night. Dinner would take me so long to eat because I would savor that food because I knew I wouldn’t let myself have another meal until the next night. My stomach was so small that I couldn’t even take in much food without getting full. These days were some of the darkest because I felt like passing out every show and didn’t tell anyone. At that point it was mind over matter I definitely could have passed out, but I kept pushing. ...

  Daily pay of $2,295 just to get better. An out of pocket intensive outpatient treatment plan will cost somebody over $2,000 everyday. Statistics show that eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. The vast majority of individuals who suffer from mental illnesses such as eating disorders aren’t getting treatment because of the high price. An estimated 30 million people in the United States suffer from an eating disorder, and with the healthcare system that is implemented in the United States, only 1 in 10 people are seeking the help they need. (South Carolina Department of Mental Health).Health care in treatment for people who suffer from mental illness such as an eating disorder should be little to no cost, because eating disorders kill as cancer. A right to health care could save a person’s life. A study from Harvard shows that, “lack of health insurance is associated with as many as 44,789 deaths per year” (Shmerling, Robert H, M. D.) This interpre...