Wow, it's been a while.You're probably wondering what on earth happened to me... well basically, a lot of shit has gone down. I am trying my luck at recovery (properly this time).
Secondly, I thought long and hard about how I wanted the next year to pan out, and could think of a million and one reasons why it was better for me to try and recover than to take this thing with me to university and beyond. Sure, the idea of being left to my own devices to starve freely at university with no one snooping and the typical student lifestyle of living wired off a bottle of diet coke and box of cigarettes still thrilled me. I'm in no doubt there will be the odd day like that when I'm away from home. But I started to reassess everything - my goals and aims and aspirations, and, all of a sudden, this thing that I'd perceived to be so liberating, turned into an entrapment. So it has taken a while to actually get comfortable with the idea of eating more. I've had a lot of days that have turned into mini binges (ie. not exceeding 2,000 calories, but still overeating by my standards).
I struck another problem when I went into hospital. Because of how bad the tonsillitis was I was barely able to swallow anything, even water. They had me on fluids through the IV and I was severely dehydrated. On top of that, strong antibiotics make your stomach freak out. I threw up a lot, even when there was nothing in my stomach to chuck up besides medicine and water, and was knocked out half the time anyway so I barely ate for about 8 days. But now I'm back at home I've gained a bit of weight back and am eating semi-normally again (for once I'm actually glad to have put on a few pounds because I looked so freakishly gaunt when I got discharged from the hospital. It wasn't an attractive look, trust me). I'm managing to total about 1,000-1,200 calories again, and most of that is made up of healthy food.
On Thursday I got out of the hospital after a 2 week inpatient stay. I was admitted after a bout of tonsillitis got really bad and I slipped into the 'danger zone'. They checked my bloods and found that I have reactive neutropenia (abnormally low white blood cells) and thrombocytopenia (low platelets, the things that stop you bleeding to death and help you heal), my liver was fucked AND I'd had glandular fever. All that, in English, means that my immune system might as well have just been asleep over the last few months - no wonder I was getting so sick all the time :( My stay on the ward is a trippy and vaguely traumatic memory in my mind; maybe I will talk about it more when I feel ready, but for the most part I remember it as distressing and strange, so I won't go into the gritty details. So in short I was very unwell, have missed a great deal of school and will probably have to take out another fortnight next half term just to recuperate, and am basically having to rethink my options big time (regarding university, and whether or not I'll be able to pass my A levels at a high enough standard to meet my offers). It's stressful. But for now, I'm not on an IV drip, I'm at home in bed unable to do much but watch films and read and type stuff on my laptop, so I thought I'd use this opportunity to return to my blog and maybe turn a new leaf.
First - how this shot of recovery came about: I started building up my calories slowly and realised that I wasn't actually gaining any weight from it. One of my biggest fears about recovery has always been the weight gain, and especially since I'm not a tiny weight to start with, the idea of piling on the pounds through eating more terrified me. But I was managing to eat a solid 1,200 calories a day and my weight wasn't budging. Sure, it wasn't going down like I wanted it to, but it wasn't going up either, and the laughable thing was that I was staying at the same weight that I'd been when I was starving myself. Suddenly it seemed ridiculous to starve myself because I wasn't keeping any weight off that way either. What I was lacking all along was stability, and I'd been fooling myself that starving = stability when the rest of my life was chaos.
Secondly, I thought long and hard about how I wanted the next year to pan out, and could think of a million and one reasons why it was better for me to try and recover than to take this thing with me to university and beyond. Sure, the idea of being left to my own devices to starve freely at university with no one snooping and the typical student lifestyle of living wired off a bottle of diet coke and box of cigarettes still thrilled me. I'm in no doubt there will be the odd day like that when I'm away from home. But I started to reassess everything - my goals and aims and aspirations, and, all of a sudden, this thing that I'd perceived to be so liberating, turned into an entrapment. So it has taken a while to actually get comfortable with the idea of eating more. I've had a lot of days that have turned into mini binges (ie. not exceeding 2,000 calories, but still overeating by my standards).
I struck another problem when I went into hospital. Because of how bad the tonsillitis was I was barely able to swallow anything, even water. They had me on fluids through the IV and I was severely dehydrated. On top of that, strong antibiotics make your stomach freak out. I threw up a lot, even when there was nothing in my stomach to chuck up besides medicine and water, and was knocked out half the time anyway so I barely ate for about 8 days. But now I'm back at home I've gained a bit of weight back and am eating semi-normally again (for once I'm actually glad to have put on a few pounds because I looked so freakishly gaunt when I got discharged from the hospital. It wasn't an attractive look, trust me). I'm managing to total about 1,000-1,200 calories again, and most of that is made up of healthy food.
So my weight this morning was 142.8 lbs, which I'm fairly happy with. As far as weight loss plans go - I still want to lose weight, but I don't want to do it the unhealthy way anymore. My loose idea is to be 135 by the summer holidays. I'll try to make this blog as recovery-oriented as I can without it being overbearing.
Side news: I'm not a vegetarian anymore. Also I'm not allowed to smoke or drink until I have my tonsillectomy at Easter :( Life is going to suck for a couple of months...
Sorry to hear you've been so ill - it sounds awful! Glad you're getting better though :) and if all the time of does mess with your grades don't worry because I'm pretty sure you can resist subjects if you need to and it much more important that you are well :)
ReplyDeleteBest of luck with the recovery - you sound like you're doing great :)
Lottie x