Courtesy: Medical Miracles, from Readers Digest 1981.
November.
From the frontiers of science and the far horizons of
personal courage, these stories of medical triumphs and miracles will reaffirm
your faith in the awesome powers of the human spirit. Dramatic victories and
human triumphs.
Selected and edited by the editors of Readers Digest
Nobody, neither family nor friends nor doctors, recognized
the onset of Stephanie’s disturbance.
But Stephanie knew, two years before the crisis, at the age of 13, that
something overwhelming, confusing and mysterious had taken hold of her.
(*) I had a problem
that I was afraid of getting fat, so I decided to exercise more but still eat
the same amount. I didn’t tell anyone
and no one knew; they would have laughed anyway because I was underweight at
the time. This went on for two years,
getting worse and worse inside. Each day
I ate a little less and a little less, and then we went to England for our
summer holidays and I told them [her mother and father] my worry and they said
how ridicules it was and so I shut up and ate less.
Stephanie’s father, Timothy Parsons, a professor at the
University of British Columbia, finally did notice her thinness. At the beach that summer in England, he
looked around for Stephanie and saw a girl in a bathing suit standing some distance
away with her back to him. ‘That can’t
be Stephanie,” he remarked to his younger daughter Allison. “She’s far too thin.” Them the figure turned and it was Stephanie.
That evening—although Stephanie had had a normal medical
checkup a few months earlier—Tim and his wife, Anne, dedicated to have her
checked again on their return to Canada.
Because of professional duties, Tim made a trip ahead of his
family. At home, he happened upon an
article in Time entitled “The self-starves.”
It described an emotional disorder called anorexia nervosa that is
especially prevalent among teen age girls form middle-and upper-income
families. The physiological source of
the problem is fear. Unable to control
this fear, the victim demonstrates another kind of control by dieting to the
point of starvation.
Tim grew alarmed. Was
it possible that his lovely, sensitive child, with her ash-blond hair and
deep-blue eyes, had ‘anorexia nervosa?’
According to the article, early attention to the disorder was important;
unless the anorexic can work out her emotional problems, or obtain effective
psychiatric treatment, the strange malady can be fatal.
When the Parsons family returned from England, it was clear
to Tim that Stephanie’s troubles had intensified, and he and Anne decided to
seek the help of a psychiatrist. Their
daughter was thinner than ever, and grew more so each day. She skipped meals of ate only a few mouthfuls
of food. Exercise became an
obsession. She bicycled for miles, ran,
did pushups and sit-ups. She couldn’t
relax. At the movies, she incessantly
rattled her heels and jigged her knees.
It was difficult for her to fall asleep, and look of fear haunted her
eyes. She wrote:
I lost 30 pounds in two years and I had dizzy spells. I felt guilty if I sat down for just a
minute. I had to keep on exercising.
One reason for Stephanie’s unhappiness was that life was not
nice and lovely the way she wanted it to be.
She worried about starving children in underdeveloped countries, and
about the killing of whales. She became
upset when a friend or relative fell ill.
After snowstorms, she shoveled the walks of elderly neighbors. She loved to do things for people, to see
others happy.
Another love was nature.
She tramped through the woods tape-recording birdcalls. One winter day she brought home pine cones
because “they were sitting in the snow and terribly cold.” She enjoyed drowning and spent many solitary
hours each week working on cartoon stories for which she invented characters
and created stories. Tim says, “In her
drawings she created a place in which people were kinder and nicer than they
are in the real world.”
(*) I draw to express
my feelings. When I’m mad I’ll go to my
room and draw till I’ve quieted down.
Drawing cheers me up. There are
few words with my drawings; the words are in my head. I tell the figures what to do. It’s like a king ruling a country.
As Stephanie enjoyed some aspects of life, so did she
intensely fear much of it?
I wonder if the world will last
Or will it all go to war
We’ll all kill each other
Then there will be no one left
To see the end
She read about deranged person who had imbedded razor blades
in Halloween apples—and thereafter she always cut up her own apples to check
for blades. News of a car accident made
her fear that her mother would be hurt in one.
She worried about her father dying in an airliner crash. She cut out scores of newspaper headlines and
assembled them into a montage of horror: “Four Die in Freezer!” “Three Perish
in Student Mobbing!” “Sex Slaying!” “Murder” And so on.
One night when she and Allison were in their beds, Stephanie
asked her sister, “Why am I so afraid of things and you’re not?”
“I don’t see a reason to be afraid.”
“Oh, I do, I do.”
I don’t want to grow up.
I don’t like the idea of college and handling big affairs. I would like to remain young because you have
someone to protect you. I’m so afraid of
getting old and stiff and not being able to run around and fly kites.
At times Stephanie felt as bad about herself as about life.
To tell the truth, I hate myself. I want to be somebody I like. I want to like myself most of the time but I
don’t at all. That’s probably why I’m
starving myself—because I hate myself.
Paradoxically, Stephanie enjoyed everything about food
except eating it. It was fun to bake, to
help prepare meals and shop. “You talk
about food is such an enjoyable way,” Allison said. “Why don’t you eat?”
“I know it’s wrong” Stephanie admitted. “But one part of me says, ‘Eat’ and the other
part says, ‘don’t eat!” and the “Don’t!’ is the one I have to listen to.”
Her parents implored her to eat. “We love you,” her mother said plaintively.
“Please eat!” When pleading failed, Tim
became stern. “You sit there until
you’ve eaten half of what’s on your plate!” he ordered. After an hour she did eat a few mouthfuls,
the went immediately to her room to do push-ups.
Stephanie knew that she was destroying herself and causing
her parents terrible pain and despair.
She did not want to do this.
“Daddy, can’t you help me?” she pleaded.
“If only I could,” Tim said with a breaking heart. “You know
what you have to do to help yourself.
Eat Stop exercising!”
“I try. I can’t.”
In her despair Stephanie told a friend, “I don’t know what’s happening to me. I want to please the people who love me, but
I can’t. Oh, why don’t we end this and
let me die.”
When school opened, Stephanie’s teachers talked with her and
tried to persuade her to eat, but it was futile. “You could feel the child’s tension,” says
teacher Kathryn Hurwitz. “Day by day I could see her slipping away.” The family physician tried to reason with
Stephanie. Her response: “it’s my body,
and I can do what I want with it.”
Stephanie’s psychiatrist, recognizing that his patient had
reached a critical stage, undertook intensive treatment directed at getting her
to understand her fears and put them into perspective. He also gave her tranquilizer, hoping to
reduce her frenzied compulsion to exercise.
But therapy takes time.
Stephanie did not immediately eat more or exercise less. In less than a month the psychiatrist
realized that, under existing conditions, Stephanie’s survival was at
stake. She had to take food, had to stop
exercising. He recommended that she be
hospitalized.
A few days later, Stephanie told her friend Leila
Christensen, “I’m going to the hospital.
It’s all over with me.”
“Don’t talk like that, Leila objected. ‘They’re going to help you get better.”
“No, it’s all over with me.”
On October 8, Tim and Anne drove Stephanie to the hospital.
Today was the worst day of my life. Ma and I had breakfast together in bed. I felt happy with ma’s arm around me. At the hospital I pledged with Ma and Pa for
another chance. They left, and I cried
bitterly. I feel like a cone without ice
cream, a human without a heart.
At this point Stephanie weighed just 67 pounds. Eight days after entering the hospital she
suffered abdominal pains. A gastric
ulcer (which can develop very quickly) had perforated, and she required
immediate surgery. Ulcer-related
infections then set in, and she did not have the strength to fight them. Tow days later, Stephanie Parsons was dead.
Friends of the Parsons’ in Japan sent money to he used for a
remembrance. Tim arranged to have a
Katsura tree planted in a beautiful garden on the campus of the University of
British Columbia. In the fall, a time
when Stephanie loved to tramp through woods, the Astsura’s bluish-green
heart-shaped leaves turn red, orange, pale yellow, mauve and pink. Then they drop to the earth and partially
obscure plaque that reads:
STEPHANIE PARSONS, 1959-1975.
(The italicized excerpts are taken from Stephanie’s diary
and other writings.)
What is Anorexia nervosa?
What is anorexia nervosa?
A psychosomatic illness that selectively befalls the daughters, and
extremely rarely the sons, of well-to-do and educated families. The families tend to be success, achievement
and appearance-oriented. The chief
symptom of the condition is a devastating weight loss from self-inflicted
starvation.
What is the incidence of the disorder? In the risk populating of high school and
college girls, the incidence may be as high as one in 200. And it is definitely on the increase.
Why? For one thing,
our society places enormous and unrelenting emphasis on slimness. Also, these girls tend not to see the new
freedom for women to use their talents and abilities as “lineation.” To them, it represents a frightening obligation
to be special and outstanding.
What have you found at the root of this problem? In general, these youngsters have struggled
in childhood to appear “perfect” in the eyes of others. When adolescence arrives, with its heed for
independence and self-assertion, these girls cannot break out of dependency and
submissiveness. They don’t have the
necessary control, and this lack of control is the basic psychological
issue. But they can control their own
bodies, and the exercise this control through self-starvation.
What other symptoms can alert a family? Interest in food combined with a denial of
hunger. Excessive exercising. Eating binges, them removal of food through
self-induced vomiting, laxatives and other means. Failure to menstruate or cessation of
menstruation. Excessive devotion to
school work. Sleep problems.
What treatment should be sought? Psychotherapy aimed at resolving the
underlying psychological problems, and restoration of normal nutrition. If at all possible, professional help should
be sought before the crisis stage. As
soon as the family or physician recognizes the symptoms of anorexia nervosa,
treatment by and experienced psychiatrist should be insisted on. Therapy must encourage the patient to become
more aware of and to act on the impulses.
Feelings and needs originating within herself. She then becomes capable of living as a
self-directed, competent individual who can enjoy what life has to offer.
