First she requested low-fat food at home. She then secretly stepped up her running routine.
Finally, she stopped eating.
For four months, no one suspected
she was anorexic.
In October of 1998, Meredith
Julian started feeling “weird.” Just after her 15th birthday the ambitious honor
student suddenly became angry and deeply depressed. As she struggled to hide her feelings,
Meredith gave in to a growing compulsion to lose weight.
“I started being as obsessive
about food as Ihad been about my studying,” she remembers.
That fall, Meredith weighed 105,
one pound under the ideal weight for her five-foot three-inch slender frame. She was a
pretty girl with porcelain skin, shiny long, raven hair and bright eyes. She easily
balanced her studies with basketball, softball and soccer.
“Meredith was the kind of
girl who just wanted to be the absolute best at everything she did,”her mother,
Nettie says proudly.
“I remember she’d come
in from basketball practice and show me her muscles in her arm and she’d be so
proud,”her father, Robbie adds. “She seemed to like a fit body.”
Over the holidays, Nettie and
Robbie noticed that Meredith was eating the foods she liked, but in slightly smaller
portions. When she increased her jogging a bit, they figured she was just trying to get
fit.
As she secretively began her
weight loss campaign, Meredith began to feel powerful. No one knew she wasn’t eating
her lunch at school and was running excessively to burn off her low-fat breakfasts and
dinners.
On Jan. 11, 1999, Nettie, a nurse,
suspected something was wrong and took Meredith to the doctor for a routine check-up.
“She seemed to be withdrawing
and not quite as happy as before,”Nettie recalls. “So Itook her in to have blood
work done ... when they told me she weighed 92, I was suprised. She didn’t look much
thinner then, she just seemed different.”
Meredith’s blood work came
back clear. But her pediatrician suspected that she was anorexic. He chided her, telling
her that the body needs certain amounts of fat to stay healthy. She was defiant, telling
him she already knew that.
She was then referred to a
specialist in Charlotte — but that doctor had a four-week backlog.
Nettie begged him to fit Meredith
in as soon as possible. “Ididn’t understand how anorexia worked, so I was afraid
of what could happen in a month,”Nettie says.
Finally, during a 15-minute
appointment that cost almost $200 and included no lab work, the doctor diagnosed Meredith
with anorexia. He ordered her to stop playing sports immediately and put her on Prozac.
“When we got home I was just
floored,”Nettie says. “Meredith was so upset about not being able to play sports
and I was shocked that my daughter was anorexic. It just didn’t make sense why
she’d want to starve herself.”
The Julians had no choice but to
trust the doctor, they say.
Nettie and Robbie began scouring
the library and Internet for information about eating disorders. As a high-strung
perfectionist and middle child who never learned to cope with stress in a healthy way,
Meredith was a prime candidate for anorexia, they learned.
“There was plenty of
information out there about food and its role in anorexia, but what we didn’t know
was what caused it and how to try to cure it,”Nettie says. “So we focused on the
food because that was all we knew.”
Prozac robbed Meredith of her
appetite. She no longer felt hungry when she didn’t eat and this made everything
easier, she says. She continued to throw her lunch away at school. Her friends never ate
lunch either, so this behavior didn’t stand out.
At home, Meredith ate a tiny bowl
of cereal with skim milk for breakfast and a small serving of plain pasta with vegetables
for dinner every day. She’d sit at the dinner table eating as slowly as possible
while her family looked on, enjoying a normal homecooked meal.
Meredith was eating between 300
and 400 calories a day and didn’t drink anything between meals. Her body systems were
literally starved and she became severely dehydrated. Nettie and Robbie now think the
daily vitamins she took religiously each morning probably saved her life.
Meredith began to look seriously
ill when her weight dropped to the low 80s. Her skin sagged against her high cheekbones
and turned sallow. She’d even lost the tiny bit of fat from her cheeks. “It was
hard for her to sit down because her bones were hurting her,”Nettie remembers.
Meredith’s hair became brittle.
Still, she wouldn’t eat more
than the half-cup of pasta and her morning handful of cereal.
The Julians found a recommended
psychotherapist in Charlotte who paired Meredith with a nutritionist. “Meredith would
make promises to eat, planning out a week of meals,” Nettie remembers. “And then
she just lost more weight. At this point we were just fighting to get her to eat so she
would live.”
Robbie says he was startled when
Meredith’s disposition changed completely. “She was spacey all the time and
couldn’t focus on a single conversation,”he remembers. “Her brain was
literally starved.” He says that’s when they realized she needed intensive
counseling in addition to help from the nutritionist.
Crying for help
The Julians took Meredith to a
psychiatrist in Charlotte who immediately sent her to the children’s behavior unit at
Presbyterian Hospital. Confused and hurt by their daughter’s hatefulness, they
surrendered their control to the medical staff.
Meredith weighed in at 74 pounds
—nearly 30 pounds under her ideal weight. She remembers feeling sicker than
she’d ever felt but feeling more stubborn than ever.
“The psychiatrist said
Meredith was a hard case and advised us to send her to Arizona to a treatment
center,”Robbie says. “He said we needed to get her away from everything she was
familiar with. But the problem was that it costs about $30,000 a month and you have to pay
up front. Our insurance had already just about refused to pay for any more treatment for
her. They said anorexia fell under the ‘mental health’ category, which only
allows for 10 days of inpatient treatment.”
The Julians looked into
refinancing their home and cashing in their retirement benefits. Butthey had two other
children at home to provide for — Kathryn, 16, and Baker, 8.
Nettie and Robbie struggled to
raise money to send Meredith to Remuda, a renowned treatment center inArizona. “But
we just couldn’t get that kind of money together up front because we’d already
spent so much. It was heartbreaking,” Robbie says.
Meredith remained at Presbyterian
in inpatient care. She argued with the doctor and nurses. She hated her parents for
“locking” her away in a place where patients don’t socialize and are
watched 24 hours every day.
“We didn’t fully
understand what was going on in her head, so to us it seemed so stupid,”Robbie
remembers. “It was like ‘You just need to eat, you looked fine,’ when the
underlying factors weren’t known.”
Meredith was badly shaken by the
experience at Presbyterian. She felt angry and humiliated when confronted about her
disorder. When nurses even told Meredith she wasn’t allowed to bounce her leg up and
down while she sat in a chair, she knew she was in for a good fight. “Every little
thing you did was watched and picked apart,”Meredith says. “Iwanted to get out
fast.”
The doctors took her off Prozac
and prescribed Remeron, which fought her depression and stimulated her appetite.
“I was the only one there
with an eating disorder and it was awful,”Meredith remembers. “Ihad to go to a
support group where Ilistened to these kids talk about suicide and drugs and stuff ... and
I just did whatever they told me to do so I could get out.”
The Julians feared for
Meredith’s mental state when they came to the ward and saw a boy lying on a mattress
by the nurses’ station. “He was on suicide watch so they just stuck him there
all night,” Robbie says. “That’s how extreme these kids’ problems were
—and Meredith was one of them.”
Nettie and Robbie also struggled
to cope with extremely limited visiting hours and their daughter’s sense of
hopelessness. They knew she was breaking down.
Through all this, Nettie, Robbie,
Kathryn and Baker simply tried to hold themselves together. They couldn’t afford to
get counseling to deal with the affects of Meredith’s illness that they experienced.
Not having Meredith at home felt awkward.
Despite overwhelming medical
bills, Nettie took a month’s leave from her job to care for Meredith once she was
discharged on Feb. 22.
Meredith was up to 78 pounds and
already looked better. Her mental state was returning to normal and she seemed to be off
of her emotional roller coaster.
The psychotherapist predicted that
Meredith would fully recover. Robbie and Nettie trusted him and tried to get home life
back to normal.
Meredith continued her schooling
through the Homebound program. She spent her days with her mother and ate out with her
family at night. “I was pretty good at doing whatever they told me to do because
Iwanted them to leave me alone,” she says.
Soon Meredith’s weight was up
to 85 pounds. But anorexia had ravaged her body and mind.
“I was tired all the time and
I’d grown like baby hair all over my back and my arms to keep my body
warm,”Meredith says. “And my period had stopped so I knew I was sick. But I
still started throwing my lunch away again once Igot to go back to school.”
Nettie and Robbie began spending
their lunch hours at East Rowan watching Meredith eat. “I hated that worse than
anything in the world because I knew my friends had told on me and it already felt like
everyone was watching me anyway,”Meredith says. “Nobody understood how I
felt.”
The atmosphere at home was more
tense than ever. Kathryn said not being able to get the car she’d been promised when
she turned 16 was a breaking point for her.
“I was just mad at her and
really began to hate her for what she was doing to our family,”Kathryn says.
“Imean Ilove her and Iwant her to get better, but at that time I was focusing on what
it was doing to all of us.”
Tearfully, Kathryn says life
became “a living hell.” Each family member took turns watching Meredith eat
breakfast and tried to build up her confidence. Kathryn even encouraged Meredith to tag
along when she went out with her boyfriend. But their attention just made Meredith more
defiant. She began “throwing fits”every morning because she didn’t want to
eat.
“Iwas late for first and
second period class almost every day all year because we couldn’t leave for school
until she ate her cereal,”Kathryn recalls. “When she got sick, it didn’t
just affect her. She made it hell for all of us.”
The new doctor also wouldn’t
allow Meredith to play softball and forbade her to carry a backpack. He said the weight of
her books would only help her burn calories.
“The Remeron made me hungry
all the time so not eating became harder and harder,”Meredith says. “Ifought it
anyway. It was more of a challenge.”
Nettie took Meredith for another
round of blood tests. This time, the results weren’t good. “Everything was
wrecked, especially her liver,”Nettie says. The Julians took Meredith to yet another
psychiatrist. He took Meredith off all her medication and recommended another round of
inpatient care.
By this time, Meredith’s
doctors’ meetings were taking up most of Nettie and Robbie’s free time. Kathryn
often felt like she was a second priority.
Meredith was down to 68 pounds.
“She was just skeletal,”Nettie remembers. “Her heart rate was in the 40s,
her temperature was 93 and her blood pressure was extremely low. It was getting to the
point that any more weight loss would kill her.”
It was more than her parents could
bear to see their formerly bright, energetic daughter become a “skeletal, unhappy
thing,”Nettie says. In only five months’ time, Meredith had become a stranger.
She was admitted to the pediatric
medical floor at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. She ate very well there
and remembers feeling happier than she had in a long time.
“It was like the Holiday Inn
compared to what Presbyterian was like,” Meredith jokes now. “We had good food
and video games to play and the people were really nice. But I was still wanting to lose
weight even though I knew it was unhealthy for me. I just ate whatever they gave me so I
could go home.” Meredith was no longer allowed to look at the scale when she was
weighed. This annoyed her.
Meredith was discharged when she
was up to 72 pounds. But as soon as she returned home, her compulsions grew stronger.
“I had to stay with my
grandparents during the day because Iwas doing school through the Homebound
program,”she remembers. “Iwas still getting all A’s but it was harder than
ever to study.”
When Nettie and Robbie suspected
that Meredith wasn’t eating yet again, they took her back to Baptist. Robbie
remembers having the feeling that this was his daughter’s last hope for survival.
After too many doctors, several courses of treatment and two rounds of medications, the
whole family was exhausted.
Last chance
Meredith was put on the
psychiatric ward at Baptist. She weighed only 64 pounds and always felt faint. Under the
hospital blanket, her legs looked like match sticks. She cried constantly. Nettie
remembers seeing the ridge of Meredith’s pelvic bones sticking out along her hips and
gasping.
“I remember the doctors
talking me in real serious ways,”Meredith says. “The doctor told me that
‘the best anorexic is a dead one’ and it scared me.”
The Julians were terrified. Nettie
and Robbie turned over all control to Meredith’s doctors and prayed that the
treatment would work. Kathryn and Baker struggled to understand why Meredith would make
herself so sick.
“No matter how much we loved
her and no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t cure our child,” Robbie says
tearfully. “It was hard to put her in there because it seemed so final. But it was
either do that or lose her.”
Meredith stayed on the ward under
bedrest for 15 days. She went to therapy daily and met with a nutritionist.
Soon cleaning her plate became a
habit. She didn’t even protest when the nurse who watched her eat every meal unfolded
her napkin to check for hidden food.
“At that time I was really
starting to think about how Iwas sick and I wanted to live,”Meredith says. “I
admitted to myself that I had a problem for the first time.”
When another anorexic girl came in
for treatment, Meredith was delighted. They formed a quick bond.
“When the girl came in,
Meredith looked at her and said, ‘She must be worse than me because she looks really
thin,’ not knowing that she was actually 20 pounds lighter than that
girl,”Robbie remembers. “That’s when Ibegan to understand what was going on
in Meredith’s head.”
In the beginning, Meredith went
head to head with her doctors, still fighting her diagnosis though she was close to death.
“At first, it was about telling them whatever Ithought they wanted me to say so
Icould leave,”she says. “But then I just broke down and decided I was going to
get better. I missed my usual life too much.”
Meredith says the breakthrough
came once she understood that anorexia isn’t just about food and body image.
It’s a coping mechanism.
“I didn’t understand all
that until I got a lot of therapy,” Meredith says. “I was just so focused on the
weight loss that I didn’t stop to think about anything else. Once Irealized that my
issues were about my parents and control, I had to focus on that and not food.”
Meredith finally gained enough
weight to be discharged and entered into an outpatient program.
Her next course of treatment
wasn’t going to be easy for any of the Julians.
Each morning, seven days each week
for four months, Robbie drove Meredith from Faith to Winston-Salem for treatment at
Baptist. He then drove to his sales job in Charlotte.
Meredith ate breakfast and lunch
at the hospital and got daily therapy. She began to understand why she chose to cope with
stress with food and learned alternative coping strategies.
Robbie picked Meredith up each
evening, driving to Winston-Salem from Charlotte and then home to Faith. He put more than
350 miles a day on his car. Nettie tried to be home to tend to Kathryn and Baker, but many
nights she had to go to Baptist to to meet with doctors.
“Baker and I missed out on a
lot of stuff because our parents couldn’t take us,”Kathryn recalls. “They
were always meeting with doctors or takingMeredith to the doctor.”
The family went out to dinner each
night because Meredith had an easier time eating when she didn’t see the food being
prepared. Meredith began to gain weight. Her mental state improved drastically as her
counseling grew more intense.
During those four months, Meredith
desperately missed what was once her normal routine. She longed for the challenge of
school work and to know what was going on in her friends’ lives. After a day at the
hospital she was often too tired to talk on the phone. She missed East football games on
Friday nights. On Saturdays, while her friends went to the mall, she spent the day with
doctors and a nutritionist. She dedicated her energy to getting better.
Meredith’s weight rose
steadily. She began to speak openly about her disorder. Nettie and Robbie stood by in
amazement as Meredith’s former spirited self returned.
In late August, Meredith finally
returned home and to East Rowan High. She says she is excited about her future and that
she can’t wait to put her illness behind her. “I just want to do what Iknow is
right and get better,”she says with a shy smile. “And Iknow I can.”
Meredith has to eat almost twice
the calories as most girls because she has to replace the nutrients her body has been
deprived of. This means she has to pack a large lunch and several snacks to eat at
specified times during class.
Meredith is hoping to get back
into sports. She misses the comraderie of her former teammates and the thrill of a win.
Because she’s still under treatment, visiting her doctor and nutritionist once a
week, she hasn’t been told what she weighs. But she says she hopes it’s “a
lot.” When she reaches her ideal weight, maintaining it will be another challenge.
Recovery is a daily struggle.
Meredith admits that she usually has to force herself to eat, “because it stopped
being a habit for so long,” and is working on coping with stress in healthy ways.
Because she has to eat so much to replenish the nutrients she’s lost, she often feels
“huge”after meals and snacks. “But then again, I was used to being hungry
all the time so having any food in my stomach feels weird,”she says.
One strategy that Meredith uses to
get better is instantly replacing negative thoughts about food with positive ones.
It’s a mental “checks and balances system” she hopes will become second
nature.
School will be tough for a while
as she falls back into sync with her peers and adjusts to the demanding routine once more.
But as always, Meredith is up for the challenge.
“I used to be so happy, into
sports, smart and full of energy,” Meredith remembers. “I was OK- looking and
outgoing. And that’s all of what I want to be again. Ijust want to get back to my
normal self.”
n
Nettie, Robbie and Meredith Julian
say they’re happy to offer information to anyone interested in knowing more about
anorexia. To reach them, call 279-8087. |
Today's News