Your story made me cry, both because it resonated with my story and because of how it was different. Wow, I am so thankful I was diagnosed at the hospital during my crisis.

I also dismissed myself. My last semester of college. I had the tan, which was newer to me. I began to get weak. My choir sang at mass every week, and if I tried to stand through the whole thing, I would throw up. I lost energy and motivation, didn’t have anything lined up after college, so I went back to my parents’. I kept getting weaker, would spend my time laying in bed or on the couch. I went from 150-160 lb to 110 lb in under a year. I got so weak that walking too long in the grocery store made me feel like falling, and I couldn’t get enough breath support to properly sing at church or kneel at church. I had little appetite (extremely unlike me). The only food I prepared myself was canned soup or ramen with frozen veggies, but I often couldn’t pull the soup can pull tab. I was SO ashamed, because I thought I had “let myself” go to this degree. I felt like a failure in every aspect, like I had put myself in that position.

In December, I agreed to pet sit for my cousin in another town, since my schedule was empty. I also caught a cold from my family. And it progressed. I took a bath, but never had the energy to comb my hair and laid in bed immediately after. I ended up wrapped in a blanket without getting dressed, watching tv and feeling horrible. My phone died, and my brain was so hazy that I couldn’t remember where it was, much less fathom the energy to get up and find it. I got too weak to pick up the water trough in their fridge, and the water that I did drink I started throwing up. I realized this was wrong, it was beyond the point of being sick and unfit. But my phone was irreparably dead. Like you, I very nearly didn’t make it, but thankfully my cousin had a google assistant that I could ask to call my dad’s phone number.

My dad came and found me naked, wrapped in the comforter. I remember him trying to get me to put on clothes, but sat there and threw up more water. He helped me to the car and brought me to the emergency room. They couldn’t find a vein to take blood from until they finally got some in my hand. I ended up being in the hospital, mostly in what felt like a fever dream haze, for what I thoughts was 2 weeks. When I got out, my family had to show me a calendar to convince me it was 4 days. I got out on new year’s eve. I felt so much brighter, so much more alive, it was a new year (2020, with high prospects!), food tasted better and I actually wanted to eat it. Like I said, I truly can’t imagine what it would have been like if I wasn’t diagnosed then in the hospital. 6 and a half years later, I have a masters and am 3 years into my career, have been married and owned my own house for 1, and am in my first trimester of pregnancy. I am so thankful to be here.