60 miles in 60 hours

Hi, my name’s Isabel and I was diagnosed with anorexia in May 2021 after losing a drastic amount of weight over 6 months. I had a lot of friendship issues starting from early November 2020 which only got worse and I ended up very isolated and very unwell. I started restricting my food intake slightly in December and by the time lockdown started I was eating very little. Due to my restriction not only did I lose weight but I lost my personality and was terrified of returning to school. Everyday I would beg my parents to not force me to go into school and sometimes I would cry in the car on the way home because I was so miserable.

Eventually a teacher noticed that I had lost a lot of weight and told my divisional head who alerted my parents. After an emergency referral from CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) to Pembury hospital for an assessment I was initially discharged and since we had a holiday already booked, we travelled to Italy. This was probably one of the worst weeks of my life, totally alone, starving hungry, bones extruding but still desperate to lose more weight. Every night when I went to bed I could feel my heart slowing in my chest and was scared that I would never wake up. After a further assessment from CAMHS we were instructed to return from Italy for a hospital admission and were recommended to use a wheelchair in airports.

A few days later, June 4th, I was sitting in Pembury hospital with my mum. She had to stay for multiple nights in the same room and we couldn’t leave the room because we were isolating from our trip to Italy. My heart rate was near to cardiac arrest and so I was attached to a cardiac machine which beeped ALL night long. By lunch time the next day, the nurses had passed an NG tube and for the first time I watched my mum cry asking to not have to bury her daughter.

A week later I was discharged for a weekend which was essentially a disaster and I returned to hospital on Monday and had another NG tube. During this time, one of my Dad’s university friends started writing letters to me and every since then, we’ve been writing letter back and forth which sometimes has been the only escape from the horrors of anorexia. For the next 4 weeks I was fed >95% of my diet via a feeding tube until one day I realised that I could restrict more at home so I spontaneously drank the high calorie drinks although this came with countless horrific panic attacks, often just from sitting at the table. Soon I was discharged and I started olanzapine (an antipsychotic) for my panic attacks and I began to restrict again.

Skip two months later to early September and after a few miserable days at school, having lost all the weight again I was readmitted to hospital with a cannula and again, a feeding tube. With the support of my family and some of the kindest nurses, over the next three weeks I increasingly ate more food even though I was still NG tube fed mostly and after a bed became available in a residential unit in Brighton I ate enough to be discharged and continued improving at home.

Since then I have continued improving and I was eventually discharged from CAMHS, my mum found a psychiatrist recently who diagnosed me with depression and i started sertraline (an antidepressant) which is finally starting to work.

After some recent issues with different forms of purging, things are better again.

Over February half term I decided that I wanted to raise money for BEAT which is an eating disorder charity and my dad suggested walking 60 miles in 60 hours to represent the (approximate) 60 days I spent in hospital. Thank you for reading and for your support.