NAOMI'S STORY: "BELIEVE THAT YOU CAN GET OUT OF THIS!"

Naomi

"Hey 2Medusa

I only just found this site tonight but have found so much insight already. These stories are so inspirational to anorexics and I truly understand what they have been through.

I have just recently recovered from an eating disorder myself (never to relapse again as said by my doctors), and have always wanted to change someone’s life with my testimony, so I would be very grateful if you posted this on your site, for I know I have something to give.

My name is Naomi. I am currently 16 years old and my eating disorder didn’t truly start to occur until January 2007. Yeah, I had thoughts of ugliness and being fat before but I never took it on board. It was just a fact about my life.

At the start of year eight I had this journal, barely ever wrote in it but when I did it was about my weight. My first entry at 13 years of age was “...me being so fricking fat...I really want to get down to at least 45kg, and then people might start liking me more. I would have only been 51 at the time but was fairly chubby for my age, just puppy fat, but then there were guys that weighed 10kg less than me and the same age... that really took a toll.

Even though I had this insane hate for myself I didn’t have the willpower to change anything and become skinny. I kept on trying to get skinny, but never could; one time even foretold the future “I’m thinking of not eating too much.”

Well that happened... and so much more that I never would have dreamt of.

At the start of October in 2007 I was 55kg; it was the beginning of term 3 holidays...and the beginning of my worst nightmare... I had decided to eat only healthy foods and start to walk with my mum on an 8km walk. But I wasn’t losing weight so I decided to change everything; I’d start jogging on the spot and ate less straight away.

I couldn’t stand being this fat and I just had to be skinny before going back next term...if I was then people would like me.

I kept on increasing the exercise, doing anything just to lose that extra calorie, the piece of fruit I had just eaten; after I started there was no going back.

My food portions became smaller and soon I was only eating fruit and veg with a tiny amount of cereal in the morning, and the only reason I did this was so I’d have enough energy to do my daily exercise. My 8km walk got cut down to 50min and I would not go out anywhere.

By the end of the holidays I wasn’t skinny enough. It didn’t matter how low I was on the scales, all that mattered now was that I see myself as skinny and look like models you see, but I wasn’t at that, so I decided that by my birthday I would be skinny as them.

At this time I believed there was nothing wrong with me, only that I was fat and ugly. But there was something seriously wrong; I had just started a long painful journey with Ana in my head.

Two days before my 14th birthday I was sent straight to the children’s hospital at Westmead weighing a mere 45kg which I had lost 10kg in just 6 weeks. On admission I had to be warmed up since I was way below the right temperature had a nasal gastric tube shoved down my nose and an ECG where my upper body was stark naked...I’m definite this wasn’t on my mind when I stopped eating.

The rest of my story was basically the same, I shut down in my first admission, and when released after spending Christmas and New Years at the hospital I went extremely well, but the fight wasn’t over yet...far from it.

I was readmitted after refusing food for 3 days straight and just kept on being chucked back in to this place that I believed was a hell hole. This time when I came in it was a competition to be the worst, lose weight on gate passes, eat slowly, exercise in private...anything to prove that you were still ‘sick’ was the thing to do.

For my next five admissions which occurred over a year, the longest being 13 weeks was all just one big blur, but I was definitely not getting better. I was falling deeper into this hole, and could not find my way out.

Everything that could go wrong did. I started to harm myself, I was put in the psych ward, tried to run away a few times, was sedated about two times, had major suicidal thoughts... and actually would have killed myself one night, but could not find a sharp object to do so, and then it was too late to try. And this wasn’t really to do with the eating disorder, I was hiding food, purging, hiding my medication, which I was now on anti-depressants, and every time I was ‘released’ I just starved myself and came back in with a tube up my nose...extreme fun!

After so many years with this dreadful illness I knew there had to be some break, but everyone had no idea how to get me out of this, they tried every way possible and it was up to my willpower now.

I am still amazed at my recovery, same as everyone else is still now. For a week before the major change I was currently in care by parent and I knew I had to get better, at least try and do something... so one night after crying my eyes out I went with my parents and had a creamy pasta dish, something that was forbidden in Ana’s eyes... I was discharged for the last time on July 10 2009.

I had missed out on three years of my life, restricting what I ate, missing the whole of year ten and not having any fun with my friends like any teenager should be able to do without stress. Even now I still miss out on things, like remembering the times of year 10 as well as getting dux which was my dream, not able to wear a bikini because of my scars and still controlling my emotions.

I’m not saying that the road to recovery is going to be easy, it definitely wasn’t for me. Sometimes you start to pull yourself up only to fall back into that deep hole, but you just have to keep on bringing yourself back up and BELIEVE THAT YOU CAN GET OUT OF THIS!!!! Because you CAN and WILL if you just have some faith in yourself.

I am currently sitting here typing this at 58 kilos and 175cm, the highest I have ever been in my life. It is one year after my discharge and I am feeling great and loving life and most importantly myself. Of course I still have thoughts and just yesterday I was going to harm myself again, but I am so much stronger now that I can resist those thoughts. There are still areas to improve on but it definitely gets easier each day.

Thank you 2medusa for taking the time for reading my story and I really hope that you will post this for I am even more inspired to get 100% better by just typing this. I want everyone to know that you make the decision to get through this ugly illness and you only and trust me it is so much better living on the other side.

Thank you so much Medusa

Naomi xoxoxo"

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GRAMPS LEAVES EVERYONE GAGA WITH HIS MOVES....

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KAREN ELIZABETH'S STORY: "THE GUN HAD BEEN LOADED FOR A LONG TIME..."

"Time lines are funny things… we all have them, ways of mentally measuring the years of our life. Some people measure by events, or by locations, by successes and failures. I have always measured by numbers… but not by age or years, by weight. The years of my life are neatly mapped out in my brain, categorized by ounces and pounds. I suppose that’s just one of the quirks of having had an eating disorder for more than twelve years of my life.

My name is Karen Elizabeth, I'm 23, and I have been anorexic and bulimic since age 11.

If I had to pinpoint exactly when my dysfunctional relationship with food began, I couldn’t. I can say that I probably have more early childhood memories connected to food than your average non-eating disordered person does. I can say I clearly remember the first time I forced myself to vomit… I was five years old, it was Christmas time, and I had eaten too many frosted sugar cookies. My logic was if I feel sick, then I’ll get sick, and feel better. I would not connect vomiting to losing weight for another six years.

If I had to pinpoint exactly when I started despising my body, I couldn’t do that either. It would be easy to say that my virulent hatred for my body began after being molested at age eight, but that’s not entirely true. Even as a young child, I felt disgusted by my body. I remember comparing my legs and thighs to my friends, and mine were always "too big." Even as a six year old in ballet class, I hated the way I looked in my leotard. I would stare into the wall of mirrors, wishing I were small and perfect like the other little girls. Looking back at photos, I can clearly see I was a completely average-sized little girl. But I have never felt average-sized, in my own head I have always been "Fat."

I can pinpoint the exact moment I willingly took a running leap into the realm of eating disorders. I was in sixth grade. I had long-since developed a constant sense of body consciousness, spent far too long staring into mirrors, trying on clothes, and comparing myself to other girls. One night, after dinner, a light bulb went off. I decided puking would make me skinny. If it went in, it would come out, right? And so it did, and afterwards I sat smugly in the bathtub, imagining what my thighs would look like when they no longer touched.

The gun had been loaded for a long time,
my finger had been tentatively on the trigger for a while.
That night I fired, took my first shot,
and declared all out war on my body.
If only I had known then, that this was a war that could only be won by dying.

Karen Elizabeth

Middle and high school became a blur. By eighth grade I had moved from bulimia to anorexia, and perfected the art of starvation. I joined track team in an effort to lose more weight, and used that excuse to go jogging every night. I skipped breakfast and lunch, and developed the habit of taking my dinner up to my room to study while I "ate," but all I would do was spray perfume all over the food so I wouldn't be tempted to eat it before I could "dispose" of it. On the rare nights when I did have to eat with my family, I would make a pit stop during my nightly jog, and purge in the woods.

My parents began to realize something was changing about me. I was irritable, hardly slept, my life consisted of school work and running, and I was getting very thin. My mom began buying ensure, and would try to force me to drink it before I was allowed to leave the house with friends. I would take a minuscule sip, smirk, and run out the door. My dad started making my school lunches, and would cut my sandwiches into heart shapes, trying to get me to eat. I remember choking back tears and guilt when I would throw them away in the cafeteria trash can, like I was throwing his love away.

High School came, and things just seemed to get worse each year. The first semester of Ninth grade, I discovered *adderall*. No hunger, No emotion, Pure Energy. I was hooked. For the next four years I would spend all my lunch money, and whatever else I could muster, to get my fix.

By tenth grade, I was more well-known for being the anorexic chick, then for anything else. I had my friends, mostly guys because they don't ask so many questions about your eating habits. The few girlfriends I had did what they could to keep me in control, they would stand outside the bathroom stall to keep me from purging, or if they knew someone was about to sell me *adderall*, they would threaten to turn them in unless they flushed it. I resented them at the time for it, but they may have well saved my life several times. That year I got busted for trading *vicodin* for *adderall* on school property, ended up on probation, and almost got expelled from school. It was enough to make me stop buying. I started losing my grip on hunger, and gave into bulimia. The weight started coming back on.

In 11th grade, alcohol came into the picture. I never drank like my friends from the start, at parties I would be the one who got smashed, passed out, and then woke up ready to party after everyone else had finally passed out. I was a blackout drinker from the get go, and I cannot recall an occasion where there was alcohol around me and I didn't drink. That year I vacillated into mostly bulimic behaviors, and put on an incredible amount of weight, my highest in high school, 185 lbs. I remember feeling so incredibly out of control, disgusting, and full of anger. This all served well to fuel my budding alcoholism.

In 12th grade, one of my friends, Jerry, hung himself. October 22nd of 2004. Something snapped, I stopped giving a fuck about anything. I started buying *adderall* again, I was high at his funeral. I started taking vodka to school in a water bottle. I lost my virginity to a complete scumbag, and looking back on that event, in all reality it was date-rape. I was high, but clearly remember saying "No." over and over again. The worst part is, I kept going back to him. I guess I didn't want to deal with what it really was. I just stayed in my eating-disordered, alcohol and *adderall* fueled little fantasy land. By graduation, my weight had come back down to 115 lbs, and I could wear a size 2 in American Eagle. I was a lifeguard at a local waterpark the summer before college, and the parties and blackouts picked up pace.

I headed off to Georgia Southern, as was expected. I knew in my heart that I was doing the wrong thing, that I was too sick to be left to my own devices, I could just feel the impending doom... but I didn't know how to tell my parents. My first night at college, I went to a bar, got shitfaced, stayed the night with some random guy, and bought binge food on the way back to my dorm the next morning. That's pretty much the main theme of my few months at GSU. By the 2nd week of school, I had completely stopped going to any of my classes, stayed drunk/high, binged and purged up to eight times a day. I stopped seeing all my high school friends who had come to GSU. I didn't want them to see what I had become. Then, I was introduced to cocaine by my semi-boyfriend, who was a dealer. It took me over, and within a few months I was almost constantly in a sleep-deprived, cocaine-fueled, starvation induced psychosis. You know you're pretty fucked up when your coke-dealer, drug addict boyfriend tells you he can't deal with your issues anymore.

By December, my parents started to figure out what was going on and staged an intervention, and I went to my first rehab. I was there for thirty days, and came home to live with my parents when I got out. I started going to AA regularly, and now I can say that I have not touched a drug since 2005. Alcohol, and my eating disorder are a whole 'nother story.

In the last five years, I have shifted between anorexia and bulimia, I have been every weight from 189 lbs to 102 lbs. I have been through five more residential/inpatient treatment programs, and yet my eating disorder still consumes me. Since my last treatment stay, 3 1/2 months at Rosewood Ranch in Wickenburg, Arizona, I have at least stayed sober. I now have a little over two years of sobriety through AA, but I have not overcome my eating disorder just yet.

I have lost my health insurance, which is scary for anyone, but especially for someone with anorexia and bulimia. I know that I can't afford to let this disease get to a point where my only hope is treatment, because treatment is no longer an option. But slowly, it's getting worse. About a year and a half ago, I started working as a tech in a local treatment center (go figure) and the physical exertion and stress of twelve hour shifts took its toll on my body, and I started losing weight. This triggered my anorexia, and I started slipping back into my disease.

Let me be clear, that I made the choice. I knew what was starting to happen, and I didn't fight it like I should have. I welcomed it, it allowed me to feel in control, composed, in charge. I am only a victim of my own mind, No one else causes someone to be anorexic or bulimic. There may be a lot of puzzle pieces that create the right conditions for an eating disorder to develop, but ultimately we are the ones who make the choice. The problem is, once you make that first choice to starve or puke, you're headfirst down into the rabbit hole... and the longer you stay there, and the deeper you go, the harder it is to find your way back out.

I want to get back out, I have so many reasons to get back out, but I can't even see the way back just yet. I now have a great job as and administrative assistant at a non-profit, and I absolutely love it. I've been with my boyfriend for four years now, we have a cute little dog and our own apartment, he's been sober for five years, and I know he is the guy I will marry, and the future father of my kids. My relationship with my family has healed quite a bit, (they don't quite know how bad I am struggling with my ed). I'm finally financially stable. The future I want is so close I can taste it, but my relationship with food is still standing in the way. I'm adamant about not becoming a mother until I am completely out of this disease, the thought of passing this on to my daughters is absolutely unacceptable.

My days of late consist of working all the time, drinking ridiculously strong coffee every morning, and then all day at work, only eating dinner, no breakfast or lunch. Absolutely dreading any lunch meetings that occasionally pop up at work. On my days off, if Joe is at work, I will give way to binging and purging. Then spend the rest of the day drinking pedialyte and worrying. (I have been to the ER three times in the past year for heart palpitations due to dehydration). My biggest issue right now is wondering what the hell I have done to my digestive system, as it seems that I have had a constant back up of bile in my stomach the last week, and wake up every morning feeling extremely nauseated, throw up, and it's all bile. My abdomen has been painful and crampy for the last few days, and it only takes a few bites of food for me to feel bloated. According to webmd, this could be either a gallbladder issue, or the beginning of gastroparesis. I guess it's time for a physical. Maybe this will be what it takes to make me completely surrender, before I kill myself.

I will get out of this, I will recover. I did not get sober just to die from my eating disorder. And when all is said and done, at least I'll be able to write a damn good book."

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COMPUTER CRASH...ARGHH!!!

Yesterday, my computer had a major meltdown, and I lost everything, including all e-mails. A nice welcome back after a wonderful vacation...NOT!

If you wrote me while I was away and I haven't responded, I'm afraid your e-mail has been lost.

As soon as I get this mess sorted out, I'll be posting again.

In the meantime, I think I'll join the Neo-Luddite movement ;^)

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JEREMY GILLITZER: A SHADOW OF HIS FORMER SELF [Update: REST IN PEACE, JEREMY]

(1971 - 2010)

Yesterday, I learned that Jeremy had suddenly passed away on June 1st, 2010, at the age of 38. According to this article, Jeremy weighed only 66 pounds at the time of his death.

Up until the time of his death, Jeremy had been working at the US Census Bureau, Minneapolis office.

I can't tell you how devastated I was to learn of Jeremy's passing. I got to know him through his emails and he was such a lovely person, dedicated to spreading the word about the deadly effects of eating disorders, even as he continued to struggle with his own. He will be sorely missed by his family, friends, and all of those he touched with his story of his lengthy struggle.

Jeremy, may you finally find the peace that eluded you in life. Shine on.

(Click to enlarge)

Jeremy's Obituary

ORIGINAL POST:

For Jeremy Gillitzer, his days as a male model must seem light years away.

Jeremy's face and body have morphed from well-chiselled to skeletal. He weighs only 90 pounds (41kgs) and has been anorexic and bulimic for over 25 years. Jeremy will be turning 38 years old in a few days time, on August 24, 2009.

Here is Jeremy's story...

From CityPages.com:

"Boy, Interrupted

By Kevin Hoffman

Published on October 30, 2007

"At first I worried I'd have trouble picking Jeremy out of the crowd—Caribou Coffee was packed—but there was no mistaking him. "Gaunt" isn't the word. He's fragile. Brittle. His skin is stretched so tight over his temples that you can practically see his thoughts.

All the seats were taken, so we carried our coffee next door to Subway. The restaurant was empty, but Jeremy insisted on asking permission to sit down. "We're going to order before we leave," he promised. Although Jeremy's appearance would seem to suggest otherwise, the guy making sandwiches wasn't inclined to argue.

A half-hour later, Jeremy approached the counter again and dug his hand into his pocket, plucking out a tiny, folded-up coupon. It entitled him to a kids' meal—a third the size of an adult sub. Jeremy got a scoop of tuna fish on wheat, a small milk, a four-ounce yogurt, and a cookie.

He took his meal home to his downtown Minneapolis condo, ate it in small bites, then vomited it down the drain.

Jeremy may be an extreme example, but more men than ever are suffering from eating disorders. Earlier this year, Harvard researchers released the results of the first major nationwide mental health survey to include eating disorders. It found that men accounted for 25 percent of anorexia and bulimia cases and a full 40 percent of binge eaters. "These disorders are less common in men, but maybe not quite as rare as we once thought," says Dr. James I. Hudson, the study's lead author.

There's even a tabloid-friendly name for the disorder: manorexia. The neologism was apparently coined by Dennis Quaid, who used it in an interview with Best Life to describe his experience of losing 40 pounds to play Doc Holliday in 1994's Wyatt Earp. "I'd look in the mirror and see a 180-pound guy, even though I was 138 pounds," Quaid said.

Other celebrities rumored to have suffered from "manorexia" include Ethan Hawke and Billy Bob Thornton (post-Angelina Jolie).

"There's a lot of reason to believe that body image concerns are increasing in both women and men," says Dr. Hudson.

Jeremy, who asked that his last name be withheld to protect his privacy, entered the world in St. Paul on August 23, 1971, an event he'd later sum up in four words: "The spawn is born." His biological dad didn't stick around, and his mother, who worked at a department store, married a carpenter, who dutifully adopted Jeremy.

"The relationship with my stepdad was horrible; he treated me like shit," Jeremy says. "He acted like I was an intruder in his home."

Jeremy was a pudgy kid, still carrying his baby fat, and his weight was a frequent target for his stepfather's ire. "He'd always say I was fat, or needed to lose weight," Jeremy says.

If that wasn't enough, Jeremy was going through puberty and confronting the fact that he was gay. The very thought of it horrified him. He could only imagine how his stepdad would react. And what about his grandparents, with whom he played Yahtzee?

Then, when he was 12, Jeremy discovered a solution to both problems: starvation.

"It serves two purposes," Jeremy says. "It serves a very applied purpose in that if you're doing the behaviors, you don't have time to think about being gay. And also being malnourished, you don't feel sexual, so you don't have to worry about being gay or straight."

Daralyn Sachs, a childhood friend of Jeremy's, remembers him as an emotionally needy boy who was always looking for an excuse to get out of his house. If they had a play date for Saturday morning, he'd be at her house bright and early at 7:00 a.m.

"He'd eat dinner at our house—I'm sure he would sleep over if he could," she says. "He would go from house to house, searching for somewhere to be other than home."

Within months of starting his crash diet, Jeremy was suffering advanced symptoms of starvation. He was sensitive to cold and had grown a fine coat of body hair. He saw a doctor in November 1983 who took one look at the 85-pound boy and diagnosed him with anorexia nervosa.

A month later, after losing nine more pounds, Jeremy entered Children's Hospital of St. Paul. "Jeremy is a 12-year-old boy admitted for evaluation and treatment of anorexia nervosa," reads the December 15, 1983 evaluation. "He is somewhat irritable and is having difficulty concentrating on his schoolwork. He is substantially small for his age."

The doctors employed a carrot-and-stick approach, with mixed success. Jeremy was allowed to eat anything he wanted, but his television, telephone, and visiting privileges would be taken away if he didn't meet goals for gaining back the weight. Jeremy put back on the pounds and was discharged after a month, but within a year of returning home, he was back to his bad habits.

By 14, Jeremy was stealing laxatives from the local pharmacy and taking the round pink pills by the handful. At his worst, he swallowed 30 Correctols at once. "I was throwing up, and turning around and sitting down and going to the bathroom, and throwing up, 'cause I was so sick," Jeremy says. "But sometimes I would lose seven pounds from before-and-after by taking those pills. That's in an hour, and it's all water."

Jeremy learned how to properly purge when he was sent to Station 62—the adult psychiatric ward of the University of Minnesota Hospital. An older patient named Diane had been throwing up so long, she wore dentures though she was only in her late 20s. "She kind of taught me how to do it," Jeremy says. "Taught me to drink a lot of water to get it all up, and to eat certain foods that are easier." Rice, for example, would still be coming up hours after he ate it. "Whereas things that are liquid are obviously easy to throw up—milk, yogurt, what else? Anything that's liquid or meltable. Soup without all the stuff in it."

Jeremy remembers Station 62 as a veritable Tower of London. To ensure he wouldn't puke up his food, he was confined to a geriatric chair for hours after each meal, he says. When he failed to make weight or acted out, he was sent to solitary confinement in the "Quiet Room"—a tiny cell with little more than a bare mattress.

Jeremy took to puking in protest. "People would look at it and they'd be astounded," Jeremy remembers. "But after a while they got used to it and just gave me a rag and disinfectant spray and had me clean it up."

As Jeremy cycled through treatment centers, he devised ever more elaborate ways to hide his vomit from the staff. "I'd do things to get around them, like throw up in big cups and then hide them, both in the day room and in my room. I would throw up in the washing machine and run it through the rinse cycle—I did that once, I shouldn't say I did that regularly. But it's amazing what you'll do."

Eventually, Jeremy's insurance ran out, and in order to continue treatment, he was committed to what was then known as Anoka State Hospital. It was just as restrictive as Station 62, but with a much more volatile clientele. "The first night I was there, a girl who was schizophrenic started her mattress on fire and we were evacuated into a barbed-wire courtyard," Jeremy says. "It's kind of a lot of shit for an 18-year-old to experience."

A psychiatric evaluation prepared around this time reveals the depth of Jeremy's despondence. "During the first few months of hospitalization the patient was obsessed with thoughts of suicide," it reads. "He attempted to choke himself with a towel and again with a belt.... He also states that he has cut his finger tips with razor blades in the past because he felt so numb and needed to know that he could feel something."

After a year at Anoka, Jeremy was discharged, though he wasn't cured, and he moved in with his grandparents. When he grew tired of arranging his binging and purging around their schedule, Jeremy moved into the first apartment of his own.

But try as he might, Jeremy couldn't have a normal life. He hoarded food like a survivalist, his pantries bursting with dozens of boxes of breakfast cereal. When his landlord discovered he was storing food on the patio, Jeremy received a sternly worded letter. "Please don't force me to go to the State Health Department," it said. "You're a nice young man and I don't want this to end in eviction for you."

It couldn't be avoided. Jeremy was kicked out.

Then something amazing happened: Jeremy got better. At 21 years old, he came out of the closet. "It took a couple of years, and it was kind of exploring on my own, and then it was telling a trusted family member, and then another one of them, and then friends, and the next thing you know, you're in drag," Jeremy says with a laugh. Gradually, he stopped binging and purging. The compulsion lifted like a forgotten grudge.

Freed of his symptoms, Jeremy enrolled at the U of M—this time as a student rather than a patient. He pursued his interest in political science, becoming so convinced that he would one day run for office that he had "Jeremy's Campaign for Congress" emblazoned on his checks.

Jeremy in his Calvins in 1997

He certainly looked the part. After applying the same rigor to bodybuilding that he'd used in starving himself, the waif sprouted bulging pecs and six-pack abs. He found work as a model and had a few blink-and-you-miss-it cameos in movies—he played a guy holding a cup of soda near an elevator in Mallrats.

"It was a wonderful time of my life," Jeremy says.

In 2004, everything fell apart. Jeremy's relationship with his first and only long-term boyfriend ended in a torrent of jealousy and hurt feelings. Then his mother fell seriously ill. Two car accidents within a month pushed him over the edge. Overwhelmed, Jeremy returned to the comfort of his old routine.

"The actual act of purging relieves anxiety—physiologically, it's one of the things it does," Jeremy says.

By January 1, 2007, Jeremy was deep in the throes of his eating disorder. "So far, 2007 has been much like 2006 ended," he wrote on his blog. "I woke up twice during the night and binged and purged. Later this morning, I will be going to circuit training class at 8:30. I might also go to spin class immediately following if I feel up to it."

Jeremy started a blog in the hopes of meeting other males with eating disorders, but he soon fell in with an online sisterhood of anorexics. They offered sympathy and comfort, especially when one of their own succumbed. "I was just reading Feisty Frida's Blog and found out the horrible news that Leah just died from her eating disorder," Jeremy wrote on January 10. "It makes me very angry at this awful disease."

Jeremy wasn't much better off. Just five days later, he found himself short of breath after his spin class, his fingers turning blue even though he wasn't cold. Jeremy called a doctor friend and briefly considered going to the hospital, but drank some juice and felt better. Later that night, he binged and purged.

He was withering away; you'd have to be blind not to see it. Finally, the manager of his gym politely asked him to stop coming until he got healthier. It was a liability issue, she explained.

Though no longer exercising, Jeremy continued to shed pounds. On March 16, he weighed 109. Just a month later, he was down to 102 pounds. "Two more pounds..." he wrote on his blog. "And then what? I'll be happy all of the sudden?"

Two weeks later he hit 99, and he wasn't anywhere near happy.

Guess Who?

My hair is falling out and growing on my body...to keep me warm.

My gums are receding.

My reproductive system is dormant...or dead.

I am hunchbacked because my muscles cannot support my neck.

I am extremely constipated.

I have a bedsore on my tailbone from the friction.

An 80-year-old lady, you ask? No, a 35-year-old man.

—Posted on Jeremy's blog on June 15, 2007

If there's one thing Jeremy won't abide, it's questions about whether he's going to enter treatment. As far as he's concerned, that's nobody's business but his own. If you'd experienced what he's been through at hospitals, he says, you'd understand.

Just a few weeks ago, he seemed resigned to death.

"If I'm supposed to be here in a year, I'll be here," he said. "I figure it can't be worse than the amount I've suffered to date, so I'm not afraid of that part of it. The only thing I'm really afraid of is if there was something big I was supposed to do and I wasn't able to do it. That's my only fear."

Since then, his mood seems to have brightened. He is considering getting treatment at Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park, the best local facility for people with eating disorders. He talks about writing a memoir and offering his services as a public speaker. Maybe that's the "something big" he's supposed to do, he says.

Sachs, now a 37-year-old mother of two young boys, hopes her childhood friend will begin the journey to recovery. "I've never seen him this bad," she says. "To me, you always see him the way he should be, and so now when I look at him, I think it's horrible. When I look at him I want to cry."

On January 9th, 2009, Kevin Hoffman's story on Jeremy, Boy, Interrupted, was picked by Inside Edition in its roundup of notable 2008 stories. Congratulations, Kevin, on your compelling story.

And below...the video, Boy, Interrupted: One Man's Struggle with an Eating Disorder, from CityPagesMN, from November 2007, which has this note:

Jeremy, a 36-year-old suffering from anorexia and bulimia, was profiled in City Pages. In this footage from more than a year ago (2006), we see a healthier Jeremy...

For those of you who have read the story, this footage takes place after Jeremy started his blog, but before he stopped going to his gym because of the potential liability issue.

Please take a moment to read Jeremy's blog. He's been to hell and back.

Start here with his first post:

Introduction


(((Jeremy)))

~ Medusa

AN UPDATE FROM JEREMY:

"I would like to speak about my eating disorder to schools, companies, and any organizations that will benefit from my suffering. I know this would help me too.

If anyone knows someone that wants me to speak extemporaneously and answer questions, please let me know. Love, Jeremy."

If you would like to contact Jeremy about a speaking engagement, please send him an e-mail at jeremygillitzer@aol.com.

Many thanks.

~ Medusa

Links:
http://www.citypages.com/2007-10-31/news/boy-interrupted/
http://news.xinhuanet.com/
http://lc.eastday.com

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