A 40-week therapy course and support from son Thomas have helped Jade Hadley recover from anorexia [PETER CORNS]As Jade Hadley and her four-year-old son Thomas made their way together across a darkened field towards a fireworks display she urged him to hold her hand. He did so but what he said next will haunt her for ever.
“I’ll lead the way, mummy, because you don’t eat your carrots or any other food so you can’t see in the dark.”
For five years Jade had been living with a dangerous and overwhelming eating disorder.
Like many others in the same position she had believed she could hide it from those closest to her.
“I thought I had everybody fooled,” says Jade, 27, an Accident and Emergency nurse who lives in Tamworth, Staffordshire.
“I would eat no more than a handful of raisins or a piece of cucumber a day. I was doing a 12-hour shift at work then coming home and doing two hours of exercise videos.”
At family get-togethers where Jade knew she would be forced to eat she would punish herself afterwards with six-day liquid diets. Sometimes a binge would be followed by a purge of forced vomiting and exercise.
Jade weighed less than 7st and was too small for size six clothes but because she seemed able to carry on as a mother and maintain a demanding job it was possible to stay in denial.
She says: “You do see the pain and the distress on people’s faces each time you lose weight and I remember my mum collapsing in tears when my size six jeans fell down. But more than anyone else it was Thomas who opened my eyes to it.”
Jade had no problems with food or body image as a teenager when she was a size 12.
Her eating disorder developed in response to a series of painful and stressful challenges she faced as a young adult.
She was 21 and living away from home while studying for a nursing degree when Thomas was born. During his first year he was diagnosed as having a serious kidney disorder.
Shortly after he turned one Jade went through a painful break-up of her relationship with Thomas’s father.
“I felt nauseous with the stress and couldn’t eat,” she says.
“I lost half a stone in three weeks without trying and found I liked the feel of being slimmer.
“People complimented me and it felt good especially as I had struggled to lose my baby weight after having Thomas.”
Jade's weight fell below 7 stone and size 6 clothes were often too big for her [PETER CORNS]You do see the pain and the distress on people’s faces each time you lose weight and I remember my mum collapsing in tears when my size six jeans fell down
Jade moved back to the West Midlands to be closer to her family and she and Thomas faced many challenges as they built a new life.
“I started to keep food diaries and deliberately lose weight. As my weight continued to go down it became the one part of my life that I felt I had some control over.
“Losing weight was something I was successful at and the fuel to the fire was the sense that I was getting away with it. I could eat less and less and increase the exercise and still carry on.”
Her worried mum persuaded her to seek help and a GP confirmed that she needed urgent treatment.
Jade did her own research and chose Newbridge House, an eating disorders centre in Sutton Coldfield, near Birmingham.
There she was diagnosed as having anorexia with binge-purge tendencies.
Her body mass index (BMI) was so low that she would normally be considered for inpatient treatment but because Jade had a young child and a job it was agreed that she could have a 40-week course of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).
Key parts of the treatment programme were challenging including showing how Jade’s own body image was severely distorted and keeping detailed diaries of her thoughts and feelings.
Jade says: “A key thing that helped me through was talking to people, not for sympathy but so they could understand and help me. So for example work colleagues know why I need snack breaks.”
Having paved the way for the road to the recovery Thomas, now six, continued to provide the biggest source of inspiration.
After Jade explained her treatment to him Thomas started to talk openly about it telling his grandmother: “Nanny, do you know a man called Matt is helping my mummy to learn to eat again so we can eat together at the table now.”
Jade, who has been in recovery for more than a year, adds: “It is comments like that which make me feel so proud of myself and that is the biggest driving force of all.”
For more information on treating eating disorders visit www.newbridge-health.org.uk
No comments:
Post a Comment