A national bed crisis...
Thank God this weeks almost over. It’s been a week from hell; I’ve felt at a total loss as to what to do to with myself. At best I’ve felt despondent, at worst despairing. But the important thing is I’ve kept going.
On Wednesday morning I went to my weekly therapy appointment only to find that my therapist had once again double booked herself, meaning I got a quick in and out session lasting at most twenty minutes. This was on a day when I really needed extra support, it was on a day when I felt at my lowest; anorexia was loud, I was home alone and I felt totally powerless. None of that mattered though, what mattered was my therapist being able to tick a box to say she saw me.
She quickly took my weight; ‘ah down again… my advice is that you start on the fortisips and see how you get on. I’ll fax for urgent bloods and refer you to Addenbrooke's’, bash bosh, job done… in her eyes.
I left feeling even worse than I did before hand, I felt dejected, uncared for and even more alone with all this. I wish I would say this was a one off, that the NHS are usually better, that I do usually feel cared for. But, I don’t.
I feel like a number, an inconvenience, a lost cause.
Mummy’s now looking into crowdfunding to raise money for me to go to a specialist Eating Disorder Clinic in America, called Monte Nido. It looks absolutely amazing, and their philosophy correlates very closely to all my beliefs about recovery, but it also looks totally out of reach. My parents unwavering belief in me and relentless desire to do anything possible to help me beat this can’t be put into words.
I don’t know what to do or where to go. The only other piece of information my therapist shared with me on Wednesday was that there’s a bed crisis across the country and the earliest chance I may get one is in December. She explained that sometimes beds come up quicker, in fact one had come up at Newmarket House on Monday but I’m essentially not sick enough, someone else got it as their need was greater than mine.
Imagine telling someone with cancer that they can’t have treatment because they are in fact not yet ‘sick enough’. Ludicrous, I know, but that’s the state of the eating disorder treatment in the UK. Meanwhile, in America, the Monte Nido Clinic has multiple beds ready and waiting to help, the only problem is… you have to have the funds to afford it.
I SO want to get better, I would pay anything to get the help, but private or not, in the UK there are currently no beds. My goal has been firmly set on returning to Norland in January to resume my studies but it feels like that’s being pushed further and further away.
I don’t know what to do, or how to get the help, I just know that I need more than I’m getting at the moment. I miss my old team, I miss my old nurse; no one comes close to her unwavering support. Where’s another Sharon? There has to be better help out there?
