the start of recovery was in the hospital : july 26 2021

A month prior to my hospitalization I was grabbing some food after a trail run. Food at this point looked like lettuce and a few pieces of salami and I called it a meal.

As I opened the fridge that day I cried out to the universe asking to be freed from this food bondage I had. I sat in pain wondering if other's felt what I did. If they had the thoughts I had. I kept asking to be freed and told myself "this has to just go away with time" with absolutely no clue how or where to start and a loss of how much time had passed that I had felt this way.

I honestly did not think I had an eating disorder. Disordered eating had become so normal in diet, fitness and other industries that I thought people who weren't like me were odd.

I wanted freedom so bad. My hunger was more than me. It consumed me. Freedom to be able to actually fulfill my hunger. To be absent of the fear of sickness from food. To be absent of the fear from all the foods that my birth mother had ingrained in me that would cause disease, harm me or make me sick.

At that time I couldn't even bare the thought of letting another person know what I was struggling with. What was consuming my whole life. It was far more than a struggle. This time was one of my darkest times struggling with my disorder.

My head wasn't okay either. We don't realize all the effects nutrition has on our body. My heart wasn't beating properly, I was freezing all the time, I was so cloudy and depressed in my head, my body hurt and the list goes on.

Little did I know, I would be rescued from this in one of the hardest ways and down a tough path.

In May I became so sick. I woke up one Sunday and felt odd. My friend invited me to go on a hike to the hot springs. I did. I felt depleted but wondered why.

I came home and had a 100 degree fever. I told my friend because this was during the pandemic and she said "I don't think you're sick though..."

My fever continued for three days uncontrollably. Nothing I took helped and I could hardly eat. I would go to bed freezing and wake up so soaked I would have to change, towel off and place towels underneath me. Tuesday came around and I couldn't walk. I was in tears, my body was a different kind of ache I had never experienced. My nerves were electrifying in a painful way and I was having a full body inflammatory response. I should have gone to the ER then but I didn't.

Tuesday night I had a terrible night. I sweat through 3 sets of clothes, my dreams were full fever dreams. I was aching so much. Wednesday I called one of my close friends asking them to take me to the ER.

I got to the ER by 9am and the nurse looked at me and said "honey you don't have c0vid, something else is going on." I was dilerious, in and out of reality. I wake up on a bed and there are 5 nurses and 2 doctors surrounding me. They're hooking my heart up and putting IVs in both arms. I was in tears knowing I was dying.

One nurse grabbed my hand and said "we got you. You are completely depleted in potassium, calcium, iron, albumin and your kidneys are trying to shut down and your heart is struggling". I drifted away teary eyed due to the heaviness of her words.

My fever at this point was 104 and they couldn't bring it down.

I stayed at the hospital for a handful of days receiving bags of IVs and pain meds. The pain in my body was so overwhelming, nothing worked. I was nauseous 24/7. I had every test you could think of and it wasn't until my brother (who's a nurse) saw my results and said "Chelsea you're malnourished".

I was pushed into this journey "freed" so to speak in a rough way. But I guess I needed it because I hadn't heard it the other times. I'm incredibly lucky.