The Actuality Of Anorexia
- Luka
- Apr 20
- 4 min read
This is an educational Blog Post dedicated to the millions of people in the world who mistake anorexia for anything besides what it is: The deadliest mental illness that exists. My case of anorexia is extreme, and I am at the tail end of enduring severe physical consequences. I am sharing this with you today for those who laugh off this disease as one of vanity and silliness. In actual fact, it is that serious.
Steatotic liver disease was diagnosed after the fact, from the initial diagnosis of a deranged liver picked up in my pathology results. The liver is like the body's filter, filtering the fats and sugars found in food and processing them into energy or storage. However, with steatotic liver disease, the liver is damaged, so instead of those fats being processed, it accumulates in the liver. I've dealt with nearly all of the symptoms associated with a malfunctioned liver, though, in recent times, I've begun experiencing those on the scarier side, specifically, jaundice on my mouth, eyes and teeth. The other symptoms I suffer from are:
Swelling in the legs and ankles,
Fatigue as my body's ability to produce and distribute energy has become hindered and
Nimble bleeding and bruising from the body's difficulty in producing clotting factors.
I am so afraid of this condition progressing because its subsequent stages include cirrhosis and liver failure, which are much harder to live with, manage or reverse. As you can imagine, the consequences of this disease that I've outlined above leave me feeling rather insecure. At 22, nobody wants to have butchered, bruised and swollen limbs, nor appear yellow and exhausted, but the more I fall ill, the more I do.
These are the parts of myself I expose to you in hopes that you will reckon with the fact that anorexia seeps much farther than vanity.
Osteopenia, which was my initial diagnosis, progressed into osteoporosis, my next, but not final bone density diagnosis. This progression of diagnosis occurs once a fracture occurs in that of someone with osteopenia: abnormally low bone density. I incurred my first fracture in 2022, slipping down a staircase. It left me with my back, broken, in two separate sites. If osteopenia is for those with low bone density, imagine how low it must be to be classified as osteoporosis. In fact, it is usually something that happens much later in life, after years and years of ageing. However, because of the state of severe malnutrition, my body is in, it was picked up at just 19. Last year, at 21, I received a repeat bone density scan which showed that my bone density was off the charts, below the data point's lowest marker. It devastated me. It still devastates me.
But out of everything, pericardial effusion is by far the scariest thing I've been diagnosed with, even to me, more so than anorexia. It is, pun intended, heart-achingly real and truly, indefinitely happening to me. Pericardial effusion is caused by such weakened valves that they leak fluid into the space surrounding the heart called the pericardial space. The buildup of fluid places such pressure on the heart that it affects its ability to beat which can, in turn, be fatal. For a long time, I felt indestructible against anorexia. For a long time, I was somewhat unsymptomatic, or at least, far less symptomatic than what was portrayed to me by the media. Or perhaps that was just my delusion to the illness... Not wanting to believe that it was killing me by the minute. I recall countless occasions where I told myself 'You're not that bad. Others are worse' which is a simply horrible truth to reflect on considering it is through this mindset that I propelled myself from health to death's door. It is through this sickness that others believe it fair to find anything comparable about someone's immense struggle with this illness. It may be horrible, Dolls, but my blog is based on the foundation of complete transparency for authentic, raw, education. So it is with that, that I reiterate this: It is in the nature of anorexia to deny one's struggle against another so as to be the 'best' at an illness that often develops for those who strive for perfection.
This illness doesn't deal with good enough-ers... It deals with perfectionists.
So, unfortunately, devastatingly, it takes things like pericardial effusion for a person with anorexia to feel 'good enough'. I think it is important to share with you, Dolls, that at the sickest I've ever been physically - when I was told that I had days, not weeks or months to live - I didn't think that the findings on my heart were skewed 'enough' to warrant such a prognosis. I also believed that the doctor was shocked purely by my weight from a clinician's point of view and that he wasn't conducting enough evidence to support his claim. Yes, Luka, because you went to medical school and undertook hundreds of immensely extensive exams and came out the other side with a degree. And the reason it wasn't good enough is because the heart default was able to resolve within a matter of days. Oh, did I forget to mention that it was resolved in that period of time with the assistance of a trained medical team monitoring me every second of the day, on 24/7 telemetry and a tube down my throat? Yes, I did forget to mention that because in my mind, once my heart returned to normal, they had no other reason to keep me there. It wasn't permanent or 'dire' enough. Anorexia in itself is not permanent and that fact in itself is where I believe a lot of sufferers and their families find the most sense of inadequacy against the rest of the population: others deeming it a choice and something that you can 'get over'. But anorexia doesn't work like that. Anorexia is like cancer, is like other sicknesses in the sense that there is a percentage of people who recover and notably, there is a large percentage of people who die due to just how much of a gruesome struggle it is to overcome, with 10% dying within the first 10 years of diagnosis and 20% dying within 20 years post-diagnosis.
Whilst my case is extreme, it is one. If the consequences of my case are enough to shock you, imagine how shocking it is to know the list of consequences others face and that I am continuing and will continue to face.
Kisses,
COS x
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