It was in the season of Lent eleven years ago that I first entered a treatment facility to correct habits of starvation and exercise-as-puntive-measure. As it did then, this period of the year carries resounding ironies for an anorexic, especially if it finds that individual in the throes of reinvention, struggling to resist deprivation as a lifestyle direction. In a twist on age-old tradition, such a person would find it necessary to tweak Christ's example, reinterpreting the Church's calls for fasting, choosing instead to suppress disordered urges, to "restrict restriction." It is a laudable notion, and efforts by Catholics and others to demonstrate temperance, reverence, even mindfulness -- a popular buzzword amongst contemporary health practitioners -- mustn't necessarily exclude those with eating issues. Instead, these forty days can be used to provide a window of time in which one launches healthier patterns, abstaining from impulses contrary to recovery.
I myself have been endlessly debating if I should be evaluated by specialists with expertise in hypermetabolism, as I have been attempting for some time to navigate what is referred to by medical journals as the "refeeding" stage of weight correction, or a process in which the severely malnourished patient receives aggressive nutritional support, often triggering uncomfortable symptoms (at best), extreme physical complications (at worst). I consider it requital for my family's continuing support and patience that I attack my issues head-on, so as of today I have almost doubled my daytime calorie intake -- the morning, afternoon, and early evening comprising those hours when I have trained myself (since age thirteen) to "wait-out" hunger until a late-night mini-feast might be allowed before surrendering to sleep. (Call it the "one and done" approach to meal planning.) In January/February 2011 I tentatively introduced a small lunch into my routine, but I have rarely managed more than that, convinced that I haven't "earned" supper if my appetite has not been stoked to its consummate standing. Energy expenditure has long been a contributing method for taxing my body to its breaking point, of creating strain under the pretense of healthful exercise, but but my overall frailty of both body and will have put the kibosh on all but local walking errands.
As things stand now I am fearful of what might ensue should I not embrace relatively normalized eating, as I have been increasingly aware of classic indicators of organ failure, most notably of the heart and kidneys. (For "Rena" to face renal failure would indeed be a pathetic ending to this story, despite the opportunity for flawless alliteration.) On an earlier outing I happened to observe The Fugees' Killing Me Softly -- a personal favorite, an achingly beautiful track -- playing over the speakers at the corner market. I had only just at that very moment followed a link on my iPhone detailing the silent signs of cardiac arrest, which in females is often gradual -- or, as the song implies, a gentle assassin. This, combining with the fact that Sunday marks the start of National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, has me connecting the dots to form a pretty clear picture of where this train is heading, for without a sharp turn in its tracks a major crash will foreseeably mark its end.
