Turning Points for Better and Worse

Facing Anorexia, Dishonesty and Separation

An Excerpt

By Cheryl Dellasega, Ph.D

"Is Ellen losing weight?" my husband asked during her eighth-grade Spring Concert. Hearing this from a man who regularly took our daughter out in public with her clothes either on backward or rescued from the Goodwill bag made me pause. I, too, had thought she looked thinner in recent weeks, but knowing she was growing taller and maturing physically had offset my concern. That night I searched the crowd of children taking their places on the risers to sing and realized I couldn't find Ellen. There was a girl in the same blue dress I had bought for her, but she was too skinny to be my daughter - wasn't she?

Impressions flashed through my brain: Ellen's recent remarks about the fat content of nearly every food she ate or didn't eat and her newfound fussiness about clothes. Hadn't she been a bit irritable, too?

"I'll take her in for a checkup," I told Paul. "She needs a new asthma inhaler anyway." A week later, our family doctor confirmed that Ellen had lost 20 pounds since the previous fall.

"Ellen, are you throwing up or not eating?" I asked, when we were alone, my heart pounding with fear. She hesitated before nodding slowly, causing tears to spill out onto her cheeks. Within days, she stopped eating completely and was then admitted, for the first time, to the eating-disorder program at a medical center in our hometown. We were told her stay would only be five days or so, but after thirty days she was still hospitalized and no better. I began to wonder: Was this just a passing incident, or was it an indicator of more serious trouble? Ellen ended up in institutions for over half of the next six months, losing 20 more pounds and missing both graduation from eighth grade and the beginning of high school. I knew what we faced wasn't a temporary problem -- it was a crisis.