Week 2 of residential.
I am a bit of a wreck. I want to scream and cry and punch walls and kick ED in the face. What. The. FUCK. I am so angry right now I can barely get this typed out. It is definitely not going to be as tactful as my normal posts. Is that even the right word for what I meant there??
On Monday I had an endoscopy.
I have had a few of these before - standard procedure for my "brand" of eating disorder. I had been suspicious of a potential throat injury about a month ago, but brushed it off as my usual hypochondria and tendency to think that everything is a catastrophe. I did call my go-to GI guy and booked an endoscopy for 2 months out figuring it wouldn't hurt just to get a "check-up." When I decided to go into residential, my outpatient treatment team strongly encouraged me to bump up my appointment. They even assisted me with that by calling my PCP and begging her to reach out to the GI office. It worked, they moved it up by a month to this past Monday.
I took public transportation to get to the hospital where I was having the procedure. It was nice to get off of the unit by myself for a while and to shed that "patient" role....even if it was just for the 45 minute ride to another medical facility. When I got there I had about a 2 1/2 hour wait before they could get started. It was a long time to sit there and think about all of the horrible things that could possibly be wrong with me. I went back and forth on whether or not I thought they would find anything abnormal. In the end I decided that even if I had done any damage a month prior, surely it would be healed by now! They wheeled me back, hooked me up to the oxygen, slipped me some Propofol and I was OUT.
When I woke up it only took about 5 minutes before I was ready to get out of there and head back to Cambridge. I had been stuck in the hospital gown and confined to the bed for over 3 hours at that point and I just wanted to move again. (There was also that pesky need for a cigarette.....) I asked the nurse how long it would take for my discharge paperwork to be printed up and if the doctor would just call me about the results. She told me he would be out in a few minutes and that he would speak with me before I left. I was mildly irritated and a tiny bit concerned.
When my doctor came out to speak with me he had pictures from the procedure with him. He started talking about endocarditis and tears and biopsies that had been performed and some swelling that would all eventually heal. I was speechless. When he said that he sees this in patients with extreme, long term eating disorders I managed to blurt out, "Oh, Mallory-Weiss tears?" And he looked at me gravely and said, "That is exactly what these are."
Oh shit.
For the past few days I have had plenty of time to think of all of the different situations that could have played out had I not come to treatment when I did, if I had waited or if I had come a month sooner.
I am angry because that was my rock bottom. That was something that I never thought would actually happen to me. It is terrifying. It is life threatening. It isn't a gray area. It is completely black and white. If I use ED behaviors, my throat will finish with the injury it started and I will not be here anymore.
That is a tough thing to deal with. Having control is a very big issue for me.
I no longer get to choose how this goes.
I do not get any leeway or any passes for mistakes.
I do not get to have bad days or lapses. I don't get second chances. This IS my second chance.
I am on my 9th life. It's now or never.
So....Let's all hope I'm the BAMF I've been working towards being for 31 years now!
Faaaaaaak.
- Pita
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