You know when you see a story about a hero and the person whose life they saved getting to meet again? The news will always have a picture of that first hug, and you can see in it the depth of what happened between those two strangers.
Gratitude. Wonder. Reminiscence. Celebration. And that one deep breath as they both consider that one of them so easily could not even be alive.
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Two weeks after Hurricane Harvey made landfall on the Texas coast, many highways and homes in my hometown of Houston remain underwater. Things have begun to shift toward rebuilding in most of the city, but the lack of preparation remains disturbing, especially for those with mental health needs. As another disaster already unfolds in Florida and the Caribbean, how can we advocate for ourselves?
Late into the first Wednesday night of 2017, yet another emergency room doctor said the unemotional words my wife and I had learned to fear, “You’re OK, we can send you home now.”
My wife insisted that we see a cardiologist, but the doctor grimaced before telling her he was busy dealing with “things that were actually important, like heart attacks and strokes.” Just over 24 hours later, two medical professionals at the Medical Center for Eating Disorders in Houston, were racing the clock to save my life. But nothing had changed in those 24 hours. And I didn’t have an eating disorder. Do you remember the first time you ever got glasses? If you do, I’m betting you remember the confusing, slightly dizzy feeling you had for the first day or two while your brain tried to get used to the new setup.
It’s been exactly 7 days since I had the majority of my visual acuity restored (thanks to some really crazy contacts called scleral lenses, which correct the way light passes through my very oddly-shaped corneas). And it’s been a really rough week—that part I wasn’t expecting. The movie is out. Opinions are flying, and showing up in my inbox from every possible source. Here’s my response to the people who have asked what I think:
I’m not watching it. Do I want to watch it? Yes, for all the reasons that half the world has been counting down the days ‘till July 14th like it was Christmas, their birthday, and a Caribbean vacation rolled into one. So why not? This decision goes down to one of the deepest parts of how I recovered, and how I’ve stayed that way. I was glad to see an article in the Chicago Tribune about Netflix’s upcoming, and very controversial, movie “To the Bone” written by someone who had actually lived through anorexia, but I was stunned to see this quote:
“The quality of life for those who have recovered from an eating disorder, namely anorexia nervosa, deteriorates steadily, despite ‘remittance from the disorder'....” for the ACUTE Center for Eating Disorders via LinkedIn and via Denver Health Late into the first Wednesday night of 2017, yet another emergency room doctor said the unemotional words my wife and I had learned to fear, “You’re ok, we can send you home now.” My wife insisted that we see a cardiologist before I was discharged, but the doctor grimaced before telling her he was busy dealing with “things that were actually important, like heart attacks and strokes.”
Just over 24 hours later, two medical professionals at the Medical Center for Eating Disorders, in Houston, were racing the clock to save my life. But nothing had changed in those 24 hours. And I didn’t have an eating disorder. The problem with the “Are you pregnant?” question has been back in the spotlight lately. Jennifer Aniston wrote a scathing essay in The Huffington Post, back in July, after she had enough of the tabloid speculation about her imaginary “baby bump,” and then last month Aniston’s own husband was in the news for having asked co-star Emily Blunt about her (real this time) baby bump before she had been ready to tell.
The idea that we should ditch our culture’s incessant body shaming has fired up again across the internet, and I’m happy to see it. But what happens when you are the one to get the pregnant question? Specifically, what happens when someone who is working on recovery from an eating disorder and successfully restoring weight gets the uninvited, “Oh! When are you due?” |
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