Fragile - The true story of my lifelong battle with anorexia by Nikki Grahame

Author:Nikki Grahame [Grahame, Nikki]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781857829648
Publisher: John Blake Publishing
Published: 2012-05-13T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

SEDGEMOOR

Fields and trees skidded past the back seat window of our Volkswagen Golf as I sat staring out on that long drive down the M4 to Somerset.

I gazed out, excited to be in the real world again after so long in Great Ormond Street. But it felt scary too, being sent so far from home without Mum or Dad or Natalie. Yet I was pleased there’d be no doctors and nurses telling me to eat any more. Now I could starve myself just as much as I wanted.

The doctors had decided that as the hospital just wasn’t making me any better it might be better off to put me in a more normal home-like environment. But going home was not an option. Towards the end of my time at Great Ormond Street there had been a mammoth meeting between my doctors, social worker, family therapist and Mum and Dad. As soon as I was called into the meeting room for the last ten minutes I could tell by Mum’s blank expression that something bad had happened.

‘We’ve been talking and have decided you won’t be going home until you are at least 18 years old,’ Dr Lask explained. ‘If you go home we have no confidence that you won’t just go straight back to starving yourself.’

It was a total body blow. It made everything so pointless. If I was never going home – because that’s what it seemed like to me – what exactly was the point of being alive? I started screaming and went into one of my temper fits, throwing my body around as people tried to restrain me, arching my back and whacking my head against the wall. It went on for almost two hours before eventually I collapsed from exhaustion and fell asleep.

The doctors felt foster care at Sedgemoor was a better option for me than home in that relationships I’d create with foster carers would not be as intense as with Mum and Tony and might prevent me relapsing. But the doctors were also aware my family was in no real state to take me back either. My anorexia had taken a terrible toll on them all.

Mum had borne the brunt of it and was in a bad way. Depression had swept over her gradually. She was still in a low place after Grandad’s death and the divorce. But it was knowing that there was nothing she could do to make me eat which really plunged her into torment. Worse still, whenever I was with her I seemed to be an even more successful anorexic.

It is quite common in families where there is an anorexic child for something called ‘reverse parenting’ to take hold. Basically it means the kid is in charge while Mum and Dad do what they are told by them because they’re so scared their child might die or shut them out if they don’t. That is exactly what was going on between me and Mum.

Then Mum had a car accident and suffered constant back pain for months which only added to her depression.

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