The owner of the company I worked for confronted me one day. He said I was too fat to walk up the stairs to do my job anymore. Shortly thereafter I was fired, and deservedly so. I gave up and decided to kill myself, but I chickened out. Instead I moved home with my mother, brother, and niece. I would go to college, stay home with my niece, and get my life together.

It actually worked out that way for awhile. I went on a crash diet and lost a massive amount of weight very quickly. I ate low calorie and low fat. Who cared all the calories I ate were low fat ice cream? I began to binge and purge if I accidentally overdid it. I didn’t want all my hard dieting work ruined. To the outside world I had won. I was finally thin, and I was beautiful. Too bad all my time and energy was devoted to thinking about food. I read cookbooks like novels, waiting for the day I would once again be able to eat. The purging through vomiting and laxatives really worked. I had found the secret all those mean thin people had hidden from me for all those years.

My crash dieting, bingeing and vomiting had unexpected consequences. I had a gut full of tiny gallbladder stones. Tiny ones are bad, real bad. The get stuck in the pancreatic duct. I became violently ill very quickly. By the time I made it to the emergency room the doctors thought it was too late. I was too sick to operate on, but would surely die without surgery. We played the waiting game. Wait till I was going to die anyway, perform surgery, die on the table, bring me back to life. Then do it all again. Three surgeries and three weeks later they had finally removed the stuck gallstone and bad gallbladder. Now I was dying of pancreatitis and jaundice. My poor body had had enough. So had I. I was a compulsive overeater stuck in a hospital and unable to eat or drink anything. Talk about compulsive overeater hell. I wasn’t even allowed ice cubes to comfort my thirst. No smell of food was allowed in my wing for fear the digestive juices would start operating. My internal organs were being digested by the spilled stomach acids. I was a goner anyway and tired of fighting. The doctors thought one more surgery would help. I decided I wasn’t worth it. Leave me alone to die I said. I kicked everyone out of my room. They gave me a private room so I could meet my maker peacefully. I was mightily pissed off at my maker by this time…he could screw off. Where I expected to be comforted by angels, I only heard the wheezing of the many machines keeping me alive. Drugs barely touched the pain, and I was ready for nothingness, or maybe even hell, I didn’t care anymore.
Here’s the kicker, I didn’t die. No one was more shocked than me, except my doctors. I made a miraculous recovery. My specialist told me after the crisis had passed, that he had seen many a patient better off than me die. He said he didn’t think I would leave the hospital for at least 6 months. A week later, he gave me the green light to leave if I promised I would never drink alcohol, or binge eat again. Several weeks after leaving the hospital I was strong enough to drive a car. My first trip was to a local bar for a few drinks while I waited for my take out food to cook. I also made my regular stop to the grocery store for some sorely missed binge foods. I was eating solid again.