Asking Myself “What To Do When Your Stomach Fails You”

Everything started at age eight when I stopped being able to eat lunch at school. If you ask a thousand different people with gastroparesis, “What do you do when your stomach fails you?” They will give you a thousand different answers. When I was in third grade my answer was to refuse to eat lunch and snacks anymore.

Of course, this made my parents very anxious, and started them asking me a bazillion questions. I almost wanted to ask them, “What would you do when your stomach fails you?” but I knew I couldn’t talk to my parents like that.

What Do You Do When Your Stomach Fails You and You Get Labeled Anorexic?

It wasn’t until the end of third grade and the summer of my nine-year-old check-up that my parents really went on high alert. But as soon as I saw Dr. Monroe, my pediatrician, she noticed I had fallen off the growth charts for weight and then was reminded that even though I had barely turned nine I was on the highly competitive level six gymnastics team. Instead of thinking, “What do you do when your stomach fails you?” She decided to plaster me with the eating disorder label and dismiss all possible physical possibilities for my stomach failing me.

When You Get Labeled Anorexic So You Cheat The System

Instead, the adults decreed me to weekly therapy sessions and twice-a-month psychiatry appointments. So, I decided to start fake eating the lunches my mom packed me, and really throwing them in the trash. i mean what would you do when your stomach fails you?

The therapist, Annie, and my parents developed a system where I would get a sticker on a chart every time I ate lunch. When I filled up the sticker chart I could pick out a new stuffed animal from the toy store.’

When You Write to Make Sense of Your Personal Hell

Annie didn’t listen to a thing I had to say.  The only helpful advice she gave me was to write down my feelings in a journal. So, my mom and I went to Barnes and Noble. We spent an hour picking out the perfect black leather journal like Harriet the Spy. That journal was the first in a lengthy series of journals that I would use until this very day.

That was the beginning of my addiction to writing and recording. It was my way of trying to make some purpose of this hell that I was wading through. I thought that maybe I’d figure out how to make things better through my writing. Maybe at least I could somehow help someone else figure out what you would do when your stomach fails you. Then they could maneuver through their own hell easier.

When Your Stomach Fails You and Your Parents Blame You For It

By the first semester of fifth grade, I was surviving on two to three 32-ounce bottles of Gatorade a day.  My parents were in official freak-out mode

“There is nothing wrong with your stomach and there is nothing wrong with your body. Physically you would be perfectly healthy if you weren’t in the process of starving yourself to death.” my parents kept telling me.

There was so much stuff I wanted to say back. I wanted to ask them when they got their PhDs in accounting and early childhood development changed into medical degrees and I wanted to ask them what they would do “when your stomach failed you”. I wanted to ask Dr. Monroe the same question as she continued to insist that i was an anorexic ex-gymnast with an atypical eating disorder.

Trying to Explain to People What it Feels Like When Your Stomach Fails You

“My stomach feels like it has rocks grinding around inside it and banging off the soft parts of my organs,” I kept trying to explain to people. But no one listened.

“My stomach feels so full it’s like I ate three Thanksgiving Dinners,” I told everyone. But no one listened.

If I drank some Gatorade too fast my stomach would bloat up. I would look like one of those starving children in Africa with the skinny little arms and legs and pregnant-looking bellies. Even then no one noticed.

“I’m having cramping, shooting, stabbing pains that spasm through me when I try to drink the Gatorade,” I tried to explain by the second semester of third grade when I had also stopped drinking except for little sips. No one listened. i wanted to scream out, “What would you do when your stomach fails you?”

Getting Put on a Kiddie Dose of Prozac

By then, I had weekly pediatrician appointments, weekly therapy appointments, and bi-weekly psychiatry appointments with a psychiatrist that had diagnosed me with child-onset depression and an anxiety disorder and had put my ten-year-old self on a kiddie dose of Prozac.

Starving to Death When Your Stomach Fails You

Weekly pediatrician visits became twice a week. Then they turned into appointments that were three times a week. After that they became daily.  I continued to spill protein more and more protein in my urine. My urine started showing up with ketones in it; a laboratory marker of starvation.  As my blood pressure bottomed out lower, my heart rate fluttered higher and higher. I noticed that my hair was beginning to fall out. The entirety of my body was wracked with tremors.  When I walked around, my whole body shook, and I would almost pass out. My hazel eyes had sunken in with dark circles smeared underneath them, even my face looked bony.

Despite the fact that I was ten and a half years old, I could easily have passed for an emaciated five-year-old. At my lowest weight back then I weighed 38 pounds at three foot ten inches tall.  The average size of other girls my age was about 4’6 and 72 pounds. I had completely fallen off the growth charts.