I wake up at 6 in the morning for another day of school. It is Monday and I hate Mondays. It is May but past my birthday, so I don’t really care anymore and I’ve had a long year and I just want summer already. I’m running a little low on sleep, due to the splitting headache I had last night until finally I gave in and took some Advil. I make sure to dedicate the day to the Lord, God this day is Yours God please strengthen me injesusnameamen. I’m slightly disoriented as my step-mom informs me that I made my breakfast last night but forgot to put it in the refrigerator (I don’t remember this), and I, for no apparent reason, deny my good friend and neighbor’s offer to go inside her house as they are not ready to leave for school yet (she then gives me a confused expression as I realize the nonsense of what I just said and tell her I’m sorry, I’m so discombobulated). I can’t breathe through my nose; I have a cold. The weather is grey and dreary from the aftermath of two straight weeks of downpour. What a great way to start a Monday morning.
I go through my day as usual. I’m half asleep and extremely busy. I blow my nose at least 15 times per class period, sick as a dog. I don’t talk to my friends and go through the motions - it’s not that I’m depressed, I’m just really, really tired. I go on a field trip to Giant for my independent living class (weird I know) and just finish half of the assignment because I am so lethargic today. This is nothing abnormal, especially for a Monday. But I’m not like this all the time, just during the day. I guess I’m nocturnal, or something.
It is the last period of the day: English. There are 20 minutes left, give or take, until the bell rings. We’re reading something in the Lit book, but I’m too antsy to follow along. I go to blow my nose for about the 200th time today. As I throw the tissue in the garbage, I notice that there is blood all over my hand. Oh, my nose must be bleeding, it’s fine, I hardly ever get nosebleeds and when I do they last like 10 minutes, tops. I’ll just take care of it here as I “listen” to the short story, no one will even notice.
People notice. Ten minutes later, it is far from stopping and my hands can’t move fast enough to block it. I’m a mess - it’s dripping all over my shirt each time I change the tissue and my friend is whispering to me, go to the nurse right now. But what is she going to do that I’m not doing now, and besides, all the attention would be on me, I’m so embarassed. Finally the teacher tells me to go and I boltto the nurse as I’m running out of tissues and need some, quick. I glance at my watch and realize this has been going on for twenty minutes.
Do you get nosebleeds a lot? she asks, in a reassuring and patient tone. No. No I never get nosebleeds I have no idea why I’m getting one so bad right now oh my gosh.
Oh yeah. For the past four months I’ve tasted blood in the back of my throat 24/7. For the past three months, whenever I’ve blown my nose (I do that often even in the springtime as I am an ice skater), I’ve had a tissue soiled with blood and not mucus. On a few occasions after becoming aware of this taste in the back of my throat or noticing just how bloody said tissue is, I’ve wondered about it for a split second, then pushed it to the back of my mind, I’m just a little more bloody than usual (whatever that’s supposed to mean), no big deal. All intense periods of bloody throat have been accompanied by acute pharyngitis: my throat hurts and I sound like a smoker and Ihavenoideawhy.
Oh.
Hm.
She comes back out with a box of tissues and tells me to take them on the bus. I do so, mortified to walk through the halls looking such a disaster. Everything is spinning, maybe it’s a dream… I hope. I step on the bus and see the eyes of each of my friends widen. Liz, there’s blood ALL OVER YOU! What’s going on?! You’re gonna die! (I didn’t believe for a second the dying part, I think they just added it in for dramatic effect.) I don’t know, this is a really bad nosebleed, I never get nosebleeds, I don’t know what to do. I sit down and lean my head towards my lap and cry, God can You please just stop my nose from bleeding. The entire bus watches to see if the bleeding stops, but in fact, it does not.. My friend sitting next to me tells me to call one of my parents, but none of them are remotely close to where I am. Not having any idea what to do, I call my step mom and tell her frantically I’m having a really bad nosebleed oh my gosh this is really bad I don’t know what to do. (I’ve been known to sweat the small stuff just a tad.) She tells me to get off at the elementary school; she’ll find me a ride. I do so and my friend escorts me to the nurse’s office. The nurse stops the bleeding temporarily, only for it to start again five minutes later. She puts some stuff up there, and finally, it stops. I look at my watch again: one hour since I first noticed blood on my hand. I can breathe. The nurse gives me a ride home, and I sleep. For two hours.
I just told you a dramatic soap-opera version of a teenage girl getting a bloody nose. But it really actually went like that.
Initially after the incident, I thought up a million and one reasons why it occured with a logical, instinctual rebuttal to each. I have a cold (I’ve had far worse colds with no trace of blood on the tissues). It’s genetic, I’m prone to nosebleeds (my dad is prone to nosebleeds, but it’s been going on his whole life. I don’t remember the last time I got one). I’m an ice skater (I haven’t been on the ice since Saturday, you’d think if it was because of that my nose would start bleeding on the ice).
My esophagus has endured countless blows by stomach acid and diet coke; I have an eating disorder. My esophagus is irritated and it’s bleeding into my throat and thus, my nose.
No rebuttal to that one. To my dismay, my therapist agreed.
But wait… I was just kidding. I didn’t really mean to get sick.
I have heard, and I’m sure you have too, a lot of anorexic and bulimic girls telling their story explain, “It started out as just a diet; I just wanted to lose five pounds. I wanted to look like the girls in magazines. I really didn’t mean for it to get so out of control. Then people started noticing, and they asked me about it, and I told them no, I didn’t have a problem, it was just a diet, dammit. I still thought I was fat, after all. I was wrong.” That phrase practically plays on recording in my mind I’ve heard it so much. But I am not one of those girls.
My eating disorder did not start out as a diet at all, although I did/do have body image issues. I’ve never been one to give a rat’s ass about what all the celebrities look like or how they lost ten pounds in two weeks. I knew as early as a month into my addiction that I had a problem and I was sick and it wasn’t going away and I needed help. I never said to anyone, “It’s not a problem. I can stop whenever I want,” because I knew that wasn’t true. No, I told people, “I’m scared I’m going to be one of those girls in the hospitals with the feeding tubes, but don’t worry, I’m not even close to that point of sickness…yet.” I knew that if I kept up with my behaviors I would face a myriad of medical issues, and at the time, I was okay with that.
And then my body shows me that it is alive when it reacts to my abuse (what a concept). I say no, surely my body is not really here, I couldn’t have hurt it that much, but wait coughcoughexcuseme, um oh, bright red blood splatters on my sleeve. It sinks in - my body will forever bear the mark of a former bulimic. And I’m not okay with it.
I have the reaction similar to that of a teenage girl who’s had premarital sex and has just learned she has a viral STD. It cannot be cured, she will have it for the rest of her life, and she will give it to anyone she wants to have sex with in the future (not very many men want to marry a woman knowing in doing so they are going to contract an STD). She says ohh, that’s why God didn’t want me to do that. I guess I should have listened.
There is permanent damage on my esophagus; my esophagus is bleeding. I realize that that is only a minor malfunction compared to all the more severe permanent damages I could have. But it’s irreversible, I can’t go back now. And the worst part of all this is, I did it to myself.
But God works through severed limbs (Bethany Hamilton), so He must work through bleeding esophagi (plural form, I googled it). He made David a ruler, so He must make Liz something special. He can, and He will. He takes the ashes of my sin that He’s burned with His fire and He makes them into beauty. I think that’s really cool.
So I thank Him once again for being so awesome, even through all this (and I realize I’m more upset about it than it probably seems I should be). He is so good.
