There were several moments that have struck me during my time as a health coach with Word on the Wards. One experience that particularly sticks out in my mind was with a patient that I went to speak with regarding her opioid abuse. My fellow colleague, a nursing student, and myself entered the patient’s room with an agenda to find out more about her addiction to opioids and verify her methadone dose for the physician. However, the patient was not interested in discussing her addiction to opioids. Rather, she wanted to share the struggle that she was battling with anorexia.
She explained that even doing the simplest of things poses a significant challenge for her. For example, she said that her apartment is on a hill and just walking up the hill to go home causes her heart to feel like it is pounding out her chest which was very unnerving to her. She said that she had to take multiple stops to catch her breath in order to finally make it home. Additionally, she provided me with so much insight into what it is like to live with anorexia on a daily basis. She described to me that she has a constant battle with food. On the one hand, she had a desire to be healthy and feel good so she could pursue the things she enjoyed. However, at the same time, the food in her stomach was like a foreign object in her body. I can imagine that after not eating for so long, having that feeling of fullness in her stomach was very aberrant to her. She said that after eating she had an uncontrollable urge to vomit and rid the food from her body. This constant conflict that the patient was suffering from really changed my perspective of what anorexia is. Honestly, before meeting her, I thought that anorexia was more of a desire to lose weight, rather than an actual disease that she has no control over. From this experience, I feel that I have a much better understanding about what patients with anorexia suffer with on a daily basis and how they simply cannot just stop feeling the need to purge themselves of the food they just ate.
I believe that there should be readily available programs for patients with anorexia to access in order to help them develop a healthy concept of food and understanding of how to give their bodies nutrition. Towards the end of our conversation, the patient revealed that her deepest fear is not being able to find a facility to get treatment for her anorexia and end up dying from this disease. She felt as if all of her options had been exhausted, having previously been to many psych wards and then being discharged the following day, because she was not at acute risk of harming herself or others. Then, upon returning home, all of her purging habits returned and were never able to get resolved. I think that it is terrible that this patient was losing hope in finding a treatment to help her fight this disease. It is very unfortunate that this happened because this disease could be treated if she had access to a facility that would help her develop a healthy routine, so when she went home the same issues she was having would not reemerge.
I hope that other health care providers can gain a new perspective of what their patients with anorexia are experiencing on a day to day basis. Also, I think that much progress needs to be made in terms of insurance companies covering the necessary treatments for anorexic patients to develop a healthy relationship with food. I am very grateful that I was able to have this experience as a health coach with Word on the Wards and, ultimately, I believe that it made me a more compassionate health care provider.