1. You measure the cost of things in nutrition appointments (ex: That shirt is one nutrition appointment. These shoes are worth two appointments).
2. You start dressing like your professionals (or maybe, they starts dressing like you…)
3. “Treatment” is a recurring event with no end date on your calendar.
4. You’ve never needed to purchase “Eating in the Light of the Moon” because at some point you have been given a photocopy of every chapter.
5. In group, no one sits in your seat, even when you’re not there (because you’ve been sitting there since last year).
6. The group therapist wishes you would just finish treatment already so that she could start recycling therapy topics.
7. You remember when some of the current therapists were interns.
8. You’ve modified the standard food log template to create your own (improved, of course)
9. Your therapist notices when you buy a new outfit (since she’s seen all of your other clothing).
10. When considering changing jobs, the new company’s mental health insurance is a deciding factor.

I am not guilty of all of these…. but more than a few.

grey: I think that I’m anemic.
fiance: oh?
grey: I have all the symptoms — fatigue, headache, difficulty concentrating, pale skin, leg cramps…
fiance: Funny, those sound like the same symptoms of anorexia.

Then, the next month…

grey: I think I have hypothyroidism.
fiance: You don’t say.
grey: No, really — I have all the symptoms.  fatigue, dry hair, pale skin, cold intolerance, muscle cramps, depression, abnormal menstrual cycles….
fiance: Kinda like anorexia.

And again….

grey: I think I have mono.
fiance: Let me guess — lack of energy, loss of appetite and chills.
grey: Exactly!
fiance: You don’t have mono, you have anorexia.
grey: I could have anorexia AND mono.
fiance: Do you have a severe sore throat?
grey: Well…. not YET….

Humph.  He is right — these could all be consequences of the eating disorder.  For the most part I know this, but whenever I feel overly tired of cold or crappy, I really feel like it must be something else.  My eating isn’t particularly worse that day — why should I feel worse?

I think that I forget that how I treat (or mistreat) my body compounds over time.  If my eating has been off-track for the past three ways, having a great day today isn’t going to guarantee that I feel okay.  And, even on a larger scale, I think that years of disorderedness has taken a toll on my body.  My eating disorder is nowhere near as severe as it was back in high school, but I still haven’t been 100% over the years.  Now I notice how prone to headaches I am (very prone), how I often have stomach aches, how dysfunctional I am on minimal sleep, etc.  I can’t get away with the things that I used to be able to.  Because my weight is higher and I’m eating more, this doesn’t make sense to me — clearly something ELSE must be wrong with me (like anemia or hypothyroidism or mono).  But… maybe all the years of the eating disorder has taken a toll on my body.  Beyond the bone density and menstrual issues, maybe I am just not as resilient as I once was.

However… I am still going to have labs done at some point to rule everything out.  You know, just in case…. (and in secret hopes of proving my fiance wrong!)