I Kept Asking Myself, “What is Wrong With Me?”

It was March of fifth grade and I was living off sips of Gatorade. The last time I’d had any actual food was in January. My body was skeletal and looked like I’d break if I slipped and fell.  I kept asking myself, “What is wrong with me?”  I wasn’t on some sort of starvation diet because I was scared that the food would make me get fat.  However, that’s what everyone insisted the problem was. 

Dr. Monroe, my pediatrician had started that theory after finding out I was on a high-pressure gymnastics team.  To her credit, Dr. Monore had done an abdominal x-ray and some initial blood work.  But when her tests came back normal, I asked her “What is wrong with me?”

Trying to Ask Dr. Monroe, “What is Wrong With Me?”

“Physically you are perfectly healthy,” she told me.

Then she slapped me with the anorexia nervosa label.

Even though all I was drinking were sips of Gatorade, I felt full-to-bursting all the time. Any time I tried to take more than a few sips of Gatorade at once, I immediately threw up. My belly felt like it had lava rocks in it, but all my physical complaints were dismissed.

As time passed, Dr. Monroe didn’t smile as much during our appointments.        

I started seeing her daily.  Every three days I had to go in a special room where I climbed into a tall chair with a tray.  The lady in the room would tie a tight long band around my arm and then press all around it mumbling about how terrible my veins were. Some days she mumbled extra-long and put disposable hot packs all over both hands and arms. I had to wonder “What is wrong with me that it is so hard for her to do a blood test on me?” When I heard grown-ups talk about blood tests they made them sound so easy. These blood tests were far from easy.

All the Testing Didn’t Show What Was Wrong With Me

While I was getting poked and prodded, my mom or dad would stand aside in the background looking like they wished that they could just teleport right out of that doctor’s office.

After stabbing me a whole bunch of times with the sharp needle they called a butterfly needle the lady would wiggle the whole thing inside my arm in a bunch of different directions. I kept wondering, “What is wrong with me that it is so hard to get blood to come out of my arm?”  Eventually, blood would start dripping from the needle into her test tubes. She would always collect at least four test tubes.  When she was finally done playing vampire, the lady always handed me a cup to go give them a urine sample in the bathroom that smelled like bleach,

These tests were supposed to show them whether it was time to put them in the hospital or not, they didn’t even have anything to do with figuring out what was wrong with me.

“Your levels are “circling the drain,” Dr. Monroe told me, “It’s up to you, either start eating or you’re being admitted to the hospital.”

I just nodded. It was just threat number 14,567.  Ever since threat number 205, I had stopped taking them seriously. Besides, I wanted to find out what was wrong with me.  Part of me wondered if I’d be better off in the hospital where they could run more tests on me and get to the bottom of my problems.

I Like My Gatorade With Sugar In It

By the third week in March, I had started vomiting up, even the little sips of Gatorade.  The mouthwatering, heaving, retching, and nasty bile taste in my mouth was too much.  I had to stop drinking the Gatorade completely.  Once again everyone blamed my non-existent eating disorder.

“What if you just take two sips of Sugar-free Gatorade every two minutes?” Dr. Monroe asked me.

“I hate sugar-free Gatorade,” I told her confused as to why she would suggest that kind. “I only like the kind with sugar in it.

“Oh…huh, well…um…uh…well you can try the same thing with the regular Gatorade,” Dr. Monroe suggested looking taken aback. She thought I had stopped drinking the Gatorade to cut down on calories.  She didn’t even realize that I had no idea what calories even were.

When we got home, my mom poured me little medicine cups with 15 ml of blue Gatorade in them.

“Drink half of one or one every ten minutes, just like the doctor said so that we don’t have to take you to the hospital.” My mom set me up on the couch, with the little medicine cups of Gatorade, a blanket, my teddy bear, and my laptop.

Well, after about three hours of a few sips every ten minutes, I would projectile vomit back up, all of the Gatorade I had been sipping for the last few hours.

Projectile Vomiting Gatorade

After a few days of sipping then projectile vomiting Gatorade, I’d had enough. My throat was sore, and when I spoke my voice croaked. Now I was starting to vomit up colors of Gatorade I’d drank the week before.

“No more Gatorade or any other foods or drinks,” I told everyone.  Asserting my emaciated little ten-year-old self. There was no point.   Anything I ate or drank would just cause nausea, then vomiting, then bloating, then severe abdominal pain.  My parents, doctors, and therapist decided I had somehow figured out a way to will myself to vomit.

“What is wrong with me?”  I wanted to scream.

“You’re going to end up in the hospital with an NG feeding tube jammed up your nose,” My mom told me, “You might as well eat something now by mouth so that you can stay home and we can help you instead of some clueless fresh-out of medical school resident”:

I heard what they were saying, and it terrified me to no end, but I just physically couldn’t hold anything down.

Passing Out in an Elevator

Two days after I quit drinking anything by mouth, I had one of my regular blood tests.  I chose a unicorn-jumping-over-a-rainbow-doing-a-fist-pump-sticker from the prize box and followed my dad into the elevator.   Then everything went black

When I woke up on the floor of the elevator, I felt like I was waking up from a long sleep. I heard my dad calling my name.

“Five more minutes,” I mumbled. Without even opening my eyes all the way. My head throbbed. It had hit the railing on the edge of the elevator on my way down. At that point it didn’t register though.

“Becca…Becca…Becca!!!!” When I heard the panic in my dad’s voice, I forced my eyes open. I was confused at first. Where was I? What was I doing in an elevator? Why was I on the floor?

Slowly my memory filtered back into me with every painful throb of my head.

I’d had a blood test. The lady put a gauze pad on me and then snapped a piece of tape over it.

Stepping into the elevator it had moved around on me before the door even closed It was like it had turned on its side and was trying to pin me down. As soon as I got all the way in the elevator I heard my dad calling my name and I was on the floor. There was a missing unknown gap of time.

Even My Dad Didn’t Know What is Wrong With Me

“Dad,” I croaked, my voice coming out all gravelly. Then I felt myself getting very foggy and sleepy again, blackness was swirling in around the edges, and then swallowed me whole again, and then spit me back out, back into the elevator where my dad was scooping me up in his gentle, but strong arms and carrying me to the car. I didn’t wake up again until I was halfway to the hospital.  He informed me, in as steady a tone as he could manage, that he was taking me to the ER.

I didn’t argue.

The world tilted and spun around me so much that I felt like I was in a kaleidoscope.  My legs and arms and face were tingling badly. This is a symptom that I now immediately recognize as a sign of low potassium. My entire body felt like it was partially-set Jell-O.

My dad gripped the steering wheel tight and kept glancing over at me as he rushed me to the hospital.

“Hang in there, Becca,” he kept telling me.

“Will the Hospital Know What is Wrong With Me?”

The funny thing was, as sick as I felt and as scary as it was thinking to myself, “What is wrong with me,” I was also hopeful.  Inside my head, I prayed that the hospital would have a fresh perspective. Maybe they would be able to run more tests to pinpoint whatever was actually wrong with my stomach.  If they ran enough tests I knew that they would be able to tell that this was more than just an eating disorder.

As I watched the speedometer go higher and higher, I could feel that my lips were cracking and bleeding. My heart was beating so fast that I could feel it pulsating through my entire body. When I shut my eyes felt like I was freefalling. My vision was starting to get blurry. My skin was hot to the touch and my cheeks were white as a ghost according to my dad.

I could barely move because my body felt so weak and exhausted. As much as I tried, my hands and feet refuse to move. The fingers on my hands were halfway in fists and halfway relaxed but they also refused to move.

“What is wrong with me?” I wondered for the millionth time.

Getting Carried Into the ER

My dad carried me into the ER in his arms, like I was a baby again.

“This is my daughter Rebecca Pava, she hasn’t been eating for two months and hasn’t really been drinking anything the last few days. She has an eating disorder and she just passed out after getting a blood test”.  My dad’s voice was shaky.  I had never heard my dad’s voice get shaky like that before.  He was rubbing my back like he was afraid I was going to disappear if he didn’t.