As soon as Dr. T told me he was calling my parents and I needed to go to the hospital, I fled.
I’m 18 years old. You can’t tell me what to do.
I escaped back to my dorm room, completely overwhelmed. And the only way I knew how to cope?
Drop and give me 1,000.
I hit the floor in my tiny dorm room and instantly started doing crunches. If they any one was going to make me go to the hospital, I knew this privilege would soon be gone.
10-minutes later, my roomie’s mom came into the room. I burst in tears. “Sweetheart, it will be ok,” Mrs. Dodds said, hugging me, and told me to gather my belongings.
I knew I wouldn’t be coming back for a long time.
I spent a week in Seton Hospital in Austin before I was “stable” to travel to Cardinal Glennon Hospital in St. Louis, where Dr. T said I’d be in “good hands” with an eating disorder specialist, followed by a LONG STAY in treatment, where he said I’d “get better.”
“Good hands” is relative.
The overweight doctor herself was far from compassionate and prescribed a steady diet of graham crackers, Poptarts, cereal, Oreos, English muffins, mashed potatoes, & mac & cheese to “put weight on me” while I was confined to bed rest for 5 more weeks.
Due to the inflammatory diet, I was super constipated and my legs swelled up with Edema, the size of elephant trunks.
The doctor prescribed me stool softener, Ted Hose and a 0% protein diet to “help the swelling go down.” My blood sugar was also all over with the new foods & any time it fell below 70, the nurses gave me a shot of orange juice to spike it.
I felt helpless. I had to do what the doctors said, but was this really recovery? I so, why did it feel so bad? Brain fog. Constipation. Bloating. Swollen body. Skin breakouts. Roller coaster blood sugar.
“Just trust the doctors, Lauryn,” my parents said—scared out of their minds too. They just wanted to keep me alive. And I just wanted to survive.
In the middle of it all, my ONLY rock was my faith and the promises that said that I could do ANYTHING through Him, who gave me strength. He promised. I believed.
5 weeks later I was “fit” for the next stage: treatment from hell.