HELLO FRIENDS(:

today's post shall be a very PERSONAL post about my PERSONAL encounter with an anorexic and hopefully this PERSONAL post will get us a higher mark(:

anyway lets call my anorexic friend MAF - my anorexic friend(:

so anyway from the start. way back around august last year, MAF decided to lose weight for which the reasons are deduced by me as 1. because she is tired of being fat 2. she wants to attract attention as she is an attention seeker 3. [what i think is a more important factor] she wants to be a very good ballerina, and seeing that ballerinas are skinny, she wants to be skinny too. by the way, MAF is 12 this year
so she began her diet and excercise routine. she firstly started dieting by eating only an apple for each meal, or very little porridge. she would use the excercise machine every day for at least 45 min. her body was very not used to this and thus she had to take long naps in the afternoon. back then she could afford to eat that way, because she was quite fat so at least she still had some stored energy. this went on for about 2-3 months and she looked healthy weight. she was still okay, so we were not so worried as her parents thought that she would stop or at least they could stop her when she reached an ideal weight.

however after that, she did not stop dieting and her excessive excercise. she would just eat small amouts vegetables and egg(her favourite food). she refused to eat meat for quite some time. her excercise got more intensive too. she would practice ballet every day, do 100 crunches right when she wakes up and before she sleeps, do alot of jumping and running about. she seldom sat down and when she did, she sat totally upright, refusing to relax, thinking that it would make her gain weight.
she weighed herself just about a hundred times a day and when her parents forced her to eat, she would wipe her mouth with a tissue and at the same time, spit the food out into it. she ate alot of pineapples, about 1/2 to 1 whole pineapple a day. she developed her paranoia of food and if she touched oily food she would wash her hands with alot of soap. she also rinsed her mouth after every meal for about 5 minutes. she kept asking us if she looked fat and kept saying on how 'fat' she looks. she had a very negative atttitude and this gave her parents' alot of stress and headache.
on one occasion somewhere in september/october last year, she was cutting a pineapple for herself and she accidentally cut her thumb. the wound took a long time to heal, and until now it is not fully healed. this is because of her eating habit.

and so MAF continued this way, developing various food phobias along the way. the side effects were also setting in, she lost alot of hair and she had loose skin. she bruised easily, and her wound did not heal. she also looked pale.

this picture drawn by me shows her change

early on this year, MAF's parents decided seek medical help. they brought her to NUH and she was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. the doctor warned her parents that anorexia is chronic and that they would have to monitor her continually. the nutritionist gave her a diet plan to follow and some suppliments. she had to visit the nutritionist fortnightly and go for weekly blood tests.

another drawing of mine(: this is very realistic. MAF's neck looked like this. NOT EXAGGERATION

on one visit,the doctor reviewed the results of the ECG (electrocardiogram) tests [which records the heart's electrical activity] and found that she had a very low heart rate. the doctor said that MAF could get an enlarged heart. because of MAF's excessive excercise, her heart was forced to work harder. this could cause her left chamber of her heart to be enlarged because as we know, the left side pumps the oxidised blood to te rest of the body, so she would need more oxidised blood and thus strain her heart. the bad thing about an enlarged heart was that as we also know, our heart is pumped by electric impulse. the blood that leaves our heart is eletronically neutral as the right side's charge would cancel out the left side's charge, however, if the left side of the heart is enlarged, the blood from the right side would leave first and thus it would be charged. this can cause the person to have seizures and heart attack.

so the doctor disallowed MAF to do ANY cardio excercise. she even disallowed MAF from PE. however MAF still continued to excercise and jump secretly at home when her parents were not looking. one day while secretly exercising she felt palpitation of her heart and told her parents. and she was disallowed to do ballet, even though her ballet exam was coming.

only until recently that MAF started eating better because she had to put on weight if not she would not be allowed to do her ballet exam. and she did, however, whether or not she would continue to eat better, only time will tell.

see, isnt this post so PERSONAL. hope you found it engaging. rememeber to look and the mirror and say to yourself hello beautiful. have fun eating(:

amelia(: