Story Photos
 Photo by Greg Ebersole Brittany Erickson, who has battled anorexia for five years, stands surrounded by parents Lisa and Mark and younger sister Terra outside the family's Kalama home. |
Dying to be thin: Kalama family warns of anorexia dangers
Sunday, September 10, 2006 12:10 AM PDT
By Barbara LaBoe
Printable version
E-mail this articleKALAMA -- In the second grade, Kalama's Brittany Erickson weighed 72 pounds. Today, all grown up at 18, she weighs 70.
Lisa and Mark Erickson have tried everything they can think of to help their anorexic daughter.
They've tried forcing her to eat. They've taken her to numerous doctors and emergencies rooms and had her committed to a locked psychiatric ward. They've enrolled her in an eating disorders clinic in Portland and briefly saw her weight rebound to a normal level.
But through it all Brittany was in control. And each time, as soon as she could, she stopped eating.
Now that she's 18, Brittany legally is in sole control of her medical decisions and records. Her parents can't go to her appointments or talk to her doctor without Brittany's permission.
Brittany believes this is what she's needed all along -- to get better on her own terms and timetable.
Her parents fear this final bid for control will kill their daughter. Each morning they arise wondering whether her heart will stop overnight.
Lisa and Mark said they want other parents to know how dangerous anorexia can be and how quickly a seemingly normal child can change from lean and healthy to skin and bones. If they can help just one girl from going down the same path, they said, it will be worth it.
'I don't need that food'
Lisa traces her daughter's anorexia to repeated teasing in elementary and middle school when Brittany was "chubby."
Brittany said it really started in eighth-grade -- with a boy.
She really, really liked this boy. And he wouldn't date her unless she was thin.
"I was about 140 then, so I lost weight and he started dating me and I felt good about that," she said.
From there, getting thinner and thinner became an compulsion. She began to obsessively exercise and ate even less.
"I cut back and then I cut back even more," Brittany said. "Then I wasn't eating and I was never hungry. I made myself think 'I don't need that food.' "
The national Mayo Clinic estimates between 1 percent and 10 percent of American girls and women have anorexia. Boys and men also have the disorder, but close to 90 percent of patients are female.
Excessive teasing as children -- or some other trauma -- is a common thread among eating disorder patients, said Carolyn Costin, who runs the Monte Nido residential treatment center for eating disorders in Malibu, Calif., and is opening another, RainRock, in Eugene. (Costin has not treated Brittany).
Often, anorexia is a patient's defense mechanism against teasing, abuse or feeling out of control, Costin said. By controlling what and when they eat, they gain a distorted feeling of power. And when faced with losing that power during treatment, patients will cling to their disease even though it destroys their body. Because of that, relapses are common.
That's what happened with Brittany.
While an outpatient at Portland's Kartini Clinic, Brittany's meals were monitored. She was fed with a feeding tube if she wouldn't eat and was placed on psychiatric drugs. Given little choice, Brittany gained weight, getting up to a healthy 124 pounds.
Her parents felt like celebrating.
But Brittany still felt fat. And when the insurance coverage for the clinic ran out, Brittany stopped eating again.
At her high school graduation in June she weighed just 65 pounds.
Scared to death
Intellectually, Brittany knows she needs to eat more and gain weight to be healthy.
She's so weak that she sleeps most of her life away when not working at the Kalama Subway restaurant. With no body fat, she's also constantly cold. Her doctor has warned that her heart could give out at any moment.
On a more typical teenage note, Brittany chafes at having to wear girls' size 10 clothes because she's too small for the junior sizes most teenagers wear. She'd like to gain enough weight to wear a size 00 pants.
But despite all her talk about getting better, Brittany doesn't really want to eat at all.
The mere thought of food is "gross" and the idea of getting fat -- which she equates with eating any food -- makes her shudder.
"When I go to eat it makes me feel terrible about myself. I think that one meal will make me gain five pounds and that makes me sick to my stomach," she said. "I know it's good for me and I make myself eat it sometimes, but I'm just afraid it's going to make me fat. ...If there was a pill I could take to get rid of this I would in an instant."
Eating regular saltine crackers instead of her preferred non-fat ones is "disgusting" she said. She exists on cereal and crackers and sodas. Sometimes just one french fry will fill up her shrunken stomach.
"I'm scared to death," she said of food. "I don't want to get fat."
According to the body mass index and insurance height-weight charts, a 5-foot, 2-inch female like Brittany should weigh between 104 to 137 pounds.
Brittany can't bring herself talk about weighing even 100 pounds and also doesn't believe she's as thin as others say. Her customers often have no idea she's anorexic, she says, though her baggy sweatshirts and flared jeans can't completely disguise her gauntness.
"But honey, you don't look good," Lisa tried again recently.
"To you, but not really," Brittany replied in a typical teenage dismissal of a parent.
"Yes, really," Lisa said with a sigh.
A family stretched thin
Anorexia hasn't just starved Brittany's body, it's ravaged her family as well.
Her mother, with several health problems of her own and unable to work, now sees Brittany's old therapist to deal with the stress.
"She doesn't know what she's doing to us," Lisa said. "I get up crying every night to check on her."
Mark, who works at the RSG Forest Products sawmill in Kalama, was unable to hug Brittany for awhile, saying he couldn't handle her feeling like "a skeleton" in his arms. He alternates between fear and frustration.
Brittany's younger sister Terra eats normally and rolls her eyes when Brittany starts talking about being fat.
The family took a $20,000 loan out to help pay Brittany's and Lisa's medical bills and said they can't afford the $5,000 a week fee even if Brittany would agree to return to the Portland clinic. And, realistically, Brittany's parents said no amount of money will help Brittany unless she wants to get better.
Mark doesn't know how much has been spent on Brittany's care but guesses it could be close to $100,000, including the insurance payments. The Kartini Clinic alone cost the insurance company $40,000 and the Ericksons $3,000. That doesn't count the numerous doctors and emergency room visits.
"It's like drinking, you can't help them unless they want to be helped," a resigned Lisa said recently.
Mark and Lisa talk about getting a court order to force Brittany back to the clinic but aren't sure it would help. Watching a frail and listless daughter weigh herself 10 times a day and ask if she's fat, though, tugs at their resolve.
"I don't understand it whatsoever," Mark said of the latest doctor's advice to back off and let Brittany try to handle it herself. "But we've tried everything else, so I guess we'll try this."
On her own
Working with a new doctor and without her parents, Brittany has gained five pounds since June. She gives much of the credit to finally escaping the social pressure cooker of high school and to making her own medical decisions.
She wants to go to college at some point but doesn't think it's healthy right now for her to be around the teenagers and young adults she just left behind in high school. Instead, she lives at home and works at Subway, thrilled that she was recently able to buy her first car.
Her parents are cautiously encouraged by Brittany's progress, but they've been here before. Costin warns that while recovery from anorexia is possible -- she herself had it for seven years as a teenager -- the statistics are "grim."
Many patients die from heart or kidney failure and there's also a high suicide rate. Of all physical illnesses, anorexia is the leading cause of death in young women, Costin said.
The number of anorexia patients who die each year is unknown because it's not a reportable condition and often is listed as heart failure or suicide on death certificates, according to the Seattle-based National Eating Disorders Association. The disease has one of the highest death rates of any mental health condition -- 20 percent -- and an estimated 5 percent to 20 percent of patients will die from it or its complications.
In her darkest hours, Lisa says she's not sure she can save her daughter but wants to help others before they get to this point. Her major concern is the amount of teasing in schools, adding Brittany also was teased for being too thin. Schools teach about drug and alcohol abuse, Lisa said, why not about teasing and eating disorders?
Kalama school officials did take some steps --- having Brittany's vital signs checked, asking if she had enough food at home --- but Brittany said that attention just further damaged her self-image.
What would Brittany like to see?
"People need to be nicer," she said. "If you see someone who is overweight, don't make fun of them, go up and talk to them. Don't make fun of anyone, because we're all different."
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