5

BREAKING NEWS: a wild appointment appears!

Not long after privately booking my private appointment with a private therapist in Southampton, April House phoned me to say there was a slot and did I want it. So I bailed on unfettered neoliberalism (£30 per appointment for students), and fell back on the NHS a week later. This place is light years away in Bitterne, and as I’ve mentioned, there’s no direct bus service from Portswood, which is really handy given that probably a damn fair amount of disordered eaters are at Southampton Uni. However, my wonderful housemate offered to give me a lift in his superb yellow car, and upon arrival I was greeted by a girl who looked both smaller and younger than me who turned out to be my clinical psychologist;  her first week on the job. I was asked to fill out the same crazy-measuring tick sheets and was asked again what I Normally Eat. After a year and a half of la folie, I have finally begun my treatment.

Between this and my initial Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, I went along to one of Student Minds’ ED group therapy sessions I’d spied on the student union calendar. I met some wonderful people and although it’s not there to replace treatment it was great just to get a load off my (flat) chest, reassured by the presence of SUSU the cat. I highly recommend these sessions to those looking to meet others sharing the same unfortunate mentality.

Cycling over to April House that Friday I had absolutely no expectations, high nor low, as a CBT newbie. I’ve regrettably been one of those people who believed in independent ‘rationalising-away’ of psychological disorders, but being in the clutches of a hunger-obsession has made me re-evaluate. With my pint-sized therapist I basically mapped out my thoughts, behaviours, feelings, and physiology and then made a timeline of important events in my life. From my childhood shame at swimming lessons to my recent breakdown at a bowl of intolerable noodles in Chinatown, my eyes were opened to a whole canister of potential underlying causes I had completely overlooked. My ‘homework’ is to record everything I eat in the coming week and my subsequent feeeeelings, a task I am throwing myself at with extreme gusto. If only I had the same gusto for actual ingestion.

4

The jury are in and it’s a resounding reaffirmation of anorexia nervosa, meaning I have reached round 3: The Waiting List. On asking for clarification all I got was “well it could be a few months, depending on cancellations and reshuffles”, basically meaning my treatment depends on other debilitated people not getting worse. She also told me to read about it in the meantime (obviously unaware of the fact I have academic shit to read) so I did, and this is what I found.

Beat is an eating disorders charity which has a website running forums, pdfs, discussion groups etc etc which whilst not providing any direct treatment does virtually everything else. I read some blogs and forum posts and what made me the most sick is that despite having a 20% mortality rate, anorexia’s treatment on the NHS has absolutely no maximum waiting list time. For physical ailments it’s usually a maximum of 18 weeks. Hilariously with ED, the longer you leave it gnawing away, the more difficult it is to shake off so it makes twat all sense to delay treatment. Some of the girls (although please remember it’s not just us) wrote they were actually denied referral by their GP because “you’re just not ill enough”. Are you taking the bloody piss.

I idiotically lost a kilo in a week and the physical effects on my body have taken their toll, which would be a disaster if I wasn’t me and actually wanted babies someday. Of course it still IS a disaster regardless, and the fact that a plate of spaghetti can send me cowering shitlessly to a corner of the room means it’s time to go private. This puts my disorder in direct conflict with my inner leftie who wants me to eat for social liberalism.

I’m off to Paris tomorrow, land of mardi fat, carbicidal baguette frites and that pain o'chocolate. Let’s see how all that goes down.