Day 32, Anorexia and French toast
3/20/2020
During this pandemic, I’m sure you understand what it means to take stock. We think about mortality. We question the meaning of our lives, and our importance (or non-importance, given the scale of things). We consider our loved ones, those locked up in quarantine with us, and those who aren’t. For some of us, we think about those who are also locked up, in a different way, the risks greater, the fear greater for those in prison. If we live alone it might not be so terribly different than before quarantine, or it might be horribly, dramatically so. No visits from friends. No visits to other places, or other people, simply a heavy reliance of Facetime, Facebook, or Zoom. Without a computer I would go bonkers. Nerdy people like I am would write letters if they lived alone. Such a nerd am I that I write letters anyway, even though I am not alone but in quarantine with Spouse and The Cat.
Of course we think of love, relationships, concern for our loved ones and ourselves in this strange and difficult time. Of course we do. Then there is also a lot of energy and thought going into one of the things we all do, have to do, or should do several times a day. I am talking about eating of course, and it is such a critical thing. We talk about the “freshman 15” when people begin college. In Covid 19 times, it may turn out to be the Covid 20 pounds we will gain, or maybe even the “Covid 25.” Or even more– we don’t know how long this is going to last. In my house, we’ve been eating a lot of “comfort food,” ice cream, candy, brownies. Maybe that’s why there is a shortage of eggs in the stores: more cooking at home means more baking. Mmm, brownies. I feel better already.
While all of us eat our new and improved Covid diets (taste wise, not necessarily health wise) there are some who have new food related challenges thanks to the Lockdown, especially people with eating disorders. Bulimics have to eat too, of course, then they “have” to vomit (but now even more surreptitiously) during quarantine. The Bulimic population has now discovered a whole new set of challenges, one they may have struggled with before, now escalated by more shared space. Secrecy. At this point, anorexics probably have fewer changes in their life style than bulimics, but are still doing all their usual tricks: pushing their food around on their plates, moving it into new patterns or squishing the food together to make it look like they’ve eaten it. Maybe anorexics in quarantine with their families do the dishes more frequently, or even exclusively, so they can chuck it in the trash before others have time to notice. “Oh, thank you dear, you are always so thoughtful about doing the dishes.” Little sister knows about big sister’s anorexia. She might be tired of her older sibling, always seeking attention with her stupid disease or annoyed with her sister in general. Big sister, instead of being a stage-hog, is more likely than not shrinking from the attention of others. Literally.
In college, when I was 19, I once worked with a woman in her forties (oh, how old that seemed to me then) who had anorexia. I worked with her for a year, proofreading the hand-written, but then word-processed, documents of college professors in a place that no longer exists called “the word-processing center.” I think the program we used was called “Word Star.” Professors in the business department would submit their Professorial work to the secretaries (They were called secretaries then.) I wasn’t a secretary; that was well beyond my pay grade. I was just a lowly proofreader. The secretaries would type it, under strict orders to type just as the Professor had written the document, warts and all. There was a surprising number of warts. Then we had to proofread, which is where I came in, searching for mistakes. Mistakes not from the secretarial typing, but from the original Professors’ work. The secretaries followed orders; the proofreading was of their own word processing, not the Professors’ writing. It seems silly now that we weren’t allowed to make any changes to the Professors’ work, even when it was obvious there were errors, but the typists were “only” secretaries, and I was “only” an A student. Of course, my proof reading skills had already been developed…in high school. I had also worked with my Dad’s magazine as a copy editor in the summers. Later I would become a college Professor myself. As directed, we did not make changes. We followed orders. Remember, they were called secretaries back then.
I once went to a professional development workshop where I learned that there are “Pro-Ana” websites that coach people (usually girls and women, though not always) how to hide their eating disorders from others. After the workshop, I was curious, so I went down the rabbit hole of the internet, which, just like Facebook makes time simply disappear. A lot like anorexia does come to think of it. In general, hiding an eating disorder is probably “easier” for bulimics because they often appear to be “normal” weight. Quarantine brings a whole new set of challenges. After quarantine, you are in a much smaller space, maybe sharing a bathroom with people who love you. Maybe it’s going to become harder to hide your disease. I’m not sure how hard it is to be either a bulimic or an anorexic in quarantine, or just in life generally. It might be harder to disguise bulimia in quarantine with your family. Vomiting is noisy.
Then again, in general for people with eating disorders, outside of quarantine it’s probably trickier for anorexics, whose disease is visible for all to see. I imagine a lot of anorexics sort of slink away from others in their family, just to keep their deadly secret safe. Before quarantine, anorexics probably travel in groups, like bats or vampires. How many calories are in a blood-full of a human, if that’s a serving? An anorexic wouldn’t ever eat a full serving, though, given what I’ve read about eating disorders. Whether in quarantine or not, there are stealth, hiding methods of weight loss for anorexics. I learned that from scouring websites, not for myself but out of curiosity for those poor creatures who suffer with anorexia. Sorry for calling you a vampire. Or a creature. (Thanks for reading, though).
For someone with anorexia, there’s the good ole secret standby: Rocks in pockets during mandatory weigh-ins (should the anorexic be lucky enough to have people who make them do such a thing). Even better if the sick (starving) people are in some type of treatment program, in which case they don’t get to cheat with heavy objects in their pockets at weigh-ins (I imagine). Still, there are other tricks, heavy shoes, the loose, blousy clothes, or layers of sweatshirts and sweaters, any of the particular clothes that make them seem fuller, rounder, or at least less sickly. Less stick-ly.
When I first met my co-worker, I was sure she must have had cancer, so stick-like was her skeleton, spine sticking out under her blouse. I found out later that it was not cancer: it was anorexia. I remember hugging her once. I was horrified by the feel of her, each vertebrae a sharp object foreshadowing her inevitable anorexic death. At some point I found out that in her twenties, she had been a beauty queen. By the time I met her, she was far from it. When we met, it was roughly 10 years before her premature death from the final beat of her heart. Her heart was simply too tired to beat anymore after so many years without food. She died of a heart attack when she was in her 50s. Oh, how young that seems to me now.
It’s interesting to me how part of her disease probably developed during her beauty queen days. Beauty in this culture is so very wedded to “skinny.” Part of her determination was always to be beautiful, to be thin, to be skinny. So sick are we in our culture, so much do we worship thin-ness that we don’t even question it, or its connection to beauty—but not health. We don’t question it all. I once lost 65 pounds over a period of just a couple years (much too fast). In that time not one person outside of my family asked about my health. Not one. I didn’t know why the pounds were shedding, without my doing a damn thing. It scared me. The weight loss started when I weighed 183 pounds. (Much too heavy, I know, but those are the facts). 183. 173. 163. 153. 143. 133, until finally 123. I had blown through clothes sizes, sometimes so quickly I didn’t even have time to buy the new clothes for the new, smaller size. Size 16. Size 14. Then sizes 12, 10, 8, 6, even a 4, all the pounds rolling off me, me not changing a damn thing in my exercise or my diet. I got compliments, strangely, even lots of them, from people I worked with, especially if they hadn’t seen me in a while. “You look amazing! What are you doing? How are you doing it?” I was surprised that not one person tried to talk to me about it from a health point of view. Maybe I had become anorexic? Maybe I had cancer? Nobody asked. A colleague who had also lost a lot of weight, though not as quickly as I had, asked, “Don’t you feel great? Don’t you feel so much better?” I did not. I felt horrible. In fact, I felt like I was dying…but nobody asked. (Well, he did). Instead, people wanted to know the secret of my weight loss “success.” The secret was lupus. When I was finally diagnosed I was just relieved it wasn’t cancer.
I had finally gone to Stanford to seek out excellent medical care because my unintentional weight loss had scared me to the point that I knew I needed help. Along the way I had been terrified that it was cancer (unintentional weight loss is one of those vague but common indicators you have to check when you fill out medical forms) but my local doctors didn’t know why I was shedding pounds either. At least they were smart enough, and kind enough, to refer me to Stanford, which is where an absolutely fabulous rheumatologist diagnosed my lupus. (Hi, Dr. L.!)
Even though I’ve lost my appetite now, I promised you by my title, a blog entry about Anorexia and French toast. Therefore, I have trod bravely forward. It was probably easier for me to write about French toast than it was to write about my late colleague who died her thin, weak death over twenty years ago. I doubt she ever ate French toast, or if she did, she would have made herself throw up after. Ah, vampires, what can you say? (No vampires or people with eating disorders were actually harmed in the writing of this post, other than those who died, sadly, due to their own illness). I hope today finds you healthy. I hope you can keep well or get well, or at the least I hope you get to eat French toast. Only if you like French toast, of course.
