At 93 pounds, I was so miserable and malnourished that I didn’t even know how ill I was. At the time, when I found myself sitting in an infusion chair receiving my third IVIG, I silently wondered to myself what I was doing there. How could I have PANDAS if I wasn’t “that sick”? Why was I getting such a heavy-handed treatment? But with my weight nearing the so-called “starvation” range, many of my organs weren’t working properly anymore. My psychiatrist warned that I’d be in the hospital soon.
Today, just two weeks after my third IVIG, I’m happy to say I’ve made tremendous progress. I’m no longer afraid of food and calories, so I’ve probably gained back about half of the weight I lost. I’ve gotten strong enough to run (slowly). My POTS symptoms are basically gone, and my parents have told me that there’s life in my eyes again. Oh, and I’ve even finished all of the summer coursework for the classes I had to take incompletes in—including a twelve-page research paper!
So am I better now? Is life perfectly peachy now that I’ve had IVIG? Continue reading “IVIG #3: Third Time’s a Charm”
This week, I reached a turning point in recovering from my eating disorder.
Up until now, although I’ve known how destructive my restricting has been to my body and though part of me wanted to stop, anorexia had so much control over me that I wasn’t completely willing to give it up. I said a few weeks ago that I was going to start treatment for it, but honestly, I was so depressed the day of the appointment that I couldn’t get out of bed and just cancelled it.
Until a few days ago, I was certain I wouldn’t return to college this semester. Between my crippling depression, incapacitating executive function and concentration issues, and my physical weakness from POTS, living independently in less than two months while taking senior-level classes seemed like an impossibility.
“You’re going to hate me when I tell you this,” my cardiologist said this week.
I braced myself to be told my heart was damaged from Rheumatic Fever—or to be told my symptoms were all in my head, as so many doctors had said over the years…
With this latest relapse, I’ve been living as a ghost in my own life.
In a single day, I went from eagerly and excitedly whittling away at homework for my summer classes, to crying at the thought of writing a single paragraph of a paper. I went from enjoying meals and coffees with my friends, to being terrified of any group of people and not eating lunch at all. I went from being praised at school for contributions I made in my department, to wanting absolutely nothing to do with my chosen field.
With this latest flare, I’ve been struggling with an eating disorder again. Restricted food intake is one of the two major diagnostic criteria for PANS, so my new obsession is nothing unusual. In fact, this is the third time in my life that I’ve faced an eating disorder: the first was when I was nine or ten and the second was in 2014, at nineteen.
This week, I celebrate my two-year blogiversary.
I started The Dreaming Panda when I was at my absolute worst—I couldn’t walk, I’d lost thirteen pounds, I could barely stay awake, and I was morbidly depressed. This means it’s been two years since that first trip to the ER when everything got so bad and precipitated a resolution to eight years of misdiagnoses. So I’m now two years into my recovery journey.
With another year of college behind me, I recently packed up my apartment and headed home. Although I was unbelievably busy this semester and definitely overworked at times, I had a great junior year. I’ve truly put down roots in the college town where I spend the school year now, so it was with mixed emotions that I pulled into my parents’ driveway for the summer.
Since being diagnosed with PANS, I’ve been on antibiotics for twenty months straight, save for one two-week break. I’ll continue until six months after my last symptom, or at the very least, through my senior year of college.
