Twelve Months

The amount of exercise is always negotiated with Mouse as it is impossible to reason with Monique. She also has a mini-stepper which she utilizes while watching TV – normally for about half an hour at a time – twice a day. In the beginning, if I did not watch her she would have stayed on the stepper all day. Apparently she had a treadmill when her anorexia first started that she used at home without supervision.

Twelve Months

The next twelve months is an experience I would rather never happened. We are still unable to establish what started this sudden refusal to eat. In an effort to entice Mouse to eat, I would take her to movies on a Friday evening with the understanding that we would go out for something to eat. Sometimes we would share a very plain Pizza and she would eat about a quarter and sometimes we would share a Toasted sandwich. Since this was her only 'meal' of the week, I found the Pizza place which made the biggest and a coffee shop whose sandwiches filled the plate. In the meanwhile she would occasionally spend an hour eating half a savoury muffin at home. It was critical that she was not around when I made the muffins, because the sight of so many ingredients would cause her total panic. When she saw the different things that went into making muffins, she imagined that she had to eat all of it at once which threw her into a frenzied panic. A very apt description of this behavior was penned by a late 19^th century neuro-psychiatrist, Charles Lasegue, as 'hysterical anorexia' when he recognized the emotional turmoil of patients suffering from anorexia nervosa.

On a number of occasions when she had not eaten for two or three days, I would suggest that she goes to an institution for help. We even made an appointment and traveled 1700km to visit a world renowned facility. She met with the resident psychologist and dietitian, was shown around the place and the treatment was summarized for her. Although she said that she would be comfortable there, she indicated also that the timing was not right. She did however promise that she would go there when she felt that she was ready. Recent studies have shown that Anorexia Nervosa patients over the legal age of 18 who have been ill for more than six years defy all treatment interventions. I was becoming more and more concerned about Mouse and tried all manner of persuasive ways to make her eat. 

I started introducing her to vitamin and mineral supplements as I could see that her whole system was degenerating. We could only compromise on her taking tablets even though she feared that the intake of vitamin tablets would 'make her fat'. Such is the morbid fear of becoming fat, in an anorectic. 

There were times that I had to walk away from her to compose myself before carrying on with a conversation. It hurt me to see this beautiful young lady committing slow suicide. I could not reason with her on any matter as she retaliated in a way that made me feel responsible for her illness. On these bad days when 'Monique' put in her appearance, there was nothing which I said or did which gained her approval. Mouse once said to me that Anorexia is stronger than what I am and that I will NEVER win against Monique. There were days that I felt convinced that she was right but fought hard not to give up. Sometimes I had to endure uncompromising verbal abuse from her and I had to remind myself that I was dealing with two very different personalities.

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