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Hello!
My name is Jessie and I am Chelsea’s partner. Chelsea and I have been together for just under four months, but it feels we have experienced a whole world together since, providing an intimate look into the world of this illness. When we first began talking Chelsea was completely open and honest with me and shared that she was in recovery from a serious eating disorder.
I was fully aware I didn’t know much about eating disorders but she shared about the treatment she had worked so hard to receive in the past, the horrible facilities she had endured, and how she had now been taking care of it by herself. It was only a couple weeks since we began talking and sharing our time together that pieces started to fall into place; I asked her what we were facing, and together we worked to understand that she was very much in a state of faux recovery.
We tried to plan meals, vitamins, regulate harmful behaviors and thoughts - but I knew we were not doctors and major medical treatment needed to be sought out. A week later she seized twice on my lap - the hospital filled her with liquids and said she was fine. Ignoring many, many of the other long-term issues that have been harming her body.
While trying to scramble to create a plan with a general practitioner, a GI, obtain EKG’s, MRI’s, all of the above - Chels’ doctor told her working was no longer viable for the state she was in and she needed to be on disability if she really wanted to focus on getting better and to live. Now there are so many frustrating elements of what continued to unfold, but I will try to boil it down.
This meant loss of employer health insurance, this meant HUNTING for medical plans that would cover inpatient and residential, this meant even when she was still covered under a great employer health plan hospitals refused to acknowledge the detrimental heart, gut, and brain health her eating disorder was causing (including having two seizures at the age of 28), this included finding out that because her BMI was so low that in order for her to be treated she needed to be an “in-patient” facility and despite weeks of searching we have located about 3 in the state of California accepting her BMI and 2 undergoing massive law suits for disturbing malpractice (one of those which she attended left her traumatized and 12 pounds lighter than when she entered), the realization that by capping low BMI’s due to ‘health liability’ they are really saying “you are too close to dying, we can’t help you” - when it is the very people who suffer from this severity that need the help.
Chelsea is one of the strongest people I have ever met and am lucky to love. She can’t see that right now and that’s okay, I try to tell her every day. She fights with everything she has and we are working to get into a facility now. Every day she battles with more than I can put into words. The physical and mental weight that has caused not only seizures but panic attacks that run the course of 48 hours that cause massive sleep deprivation, anxiety that causes tremors and her body to be drenched in sweat in a second. She wakes up every day and keeps fighting. I know a big part of that is for everybody else right now, to be living a day in her shoes currently is a weight I wish on nobody.
We are currently chasing the funds to get Chelsea care at a residential facility in Long Beach that accepts her BMI. The costs are not low but they are costs that can save her her life and for that, any price will be paid. We will not allow finance to be the barrier to her well-being, but that being said, we need all of the financial help we can get to help her go through the program and defeat some of the horrifying health giants we are facing like re-feeding syndrome. If you can donate today, we appreciate you more than can be said, if you can not - please share and spread this message wide.
Thank you!!
My name is Jessie and I am Chelsea’s partner. Chelsea and I have been together for just under four months, but it feels we have experienced a whole world together since, providing an intimate look into the world of this illness. When we first began talking Chelsea was completely open and honest with me and shared that she was in recovery from a serious eating disorder.
I was fully aware I didn’t know much about eating disorders but she shared about the treatment she had worked so hard to receive in the past, the horrible facilities she had endured, and how she had now been taking care of it by herself. It was only a couple weeks since we began talking and sharing our time together that pieces started to fall into place; I asked her what we were facing, and together we worked to understand that she was very much in a state of faux recovery.
We tried to plan meals, vitamins, regulate harmful behaviors and thoughts - but I knew we were not doctors and major medical treatment needed to be sought out. A week later she seized twice on my lap - the hospital filled her with liquids and said she was fine. Ignoring many, many of the other long-term issues that have been harming her body.
While trying to scramble to create a plan with a general practitioner, a GI, obtain EKG’s, MRI’s, all of the above - Chels’ doctor told her working was no longer viable for the state she was in and she needed to be on disability if she really wanted to focus on getting better and to live. Now there are so many frustrating elements of what continued to unfold, but I will try to boil it down.
This meant loss of employer health insurance, this meant HUNTING for medical plans that would cover inpatient and residential, this meant even when she was still covered under a great employer health plan hospitals refused to acknowledge the detrimental heart, gut, and brain health her eating disorder was causing (including having two seizures at the age of 28), this included finding out that because her BMI was so low that in order for her to be treated she needed to be an “in-patient” facility and despite weeks of searching we have located about 3 in the state of California accepting her BMI and 2 undergoing massive law suits for disturbing malpractice (one of those which she attended left her traumatized and 12 pounds lighter than when she entered), the realization that by capping low BMI’s due to ‘health liability’ they are really saying “you are too close to dying, we can’t help you” - when it is the very people who suffer from this severity that need the help.
Chelsea is one of the strongest people I have ever met and am lucky to love. She can’t see that right now and that’s okay, I try to tell her every day. She fights with everything she has and we are working to get into a facility now. Every day she battles with more than I can put into words. The physical and mental weight that has caused not only seizures but panic attacks that run the course of 48 hours that cause massive sleep deprivation, anxiety that causes tremors and her body to be drenched in sweat in a second. She wakes up every day and keeps fighting. I know a big part of that is for everybody else right now, to be living a day in her shoes currently is a weight I wish on nobody.
We are currently chasing the funds to get Chelsea care at a residential facility in Long Beach that accepts her BMI. The costs are not low but they are costs that can save her her life and for that, any price will be paid. We will not allow finance to be the barrier to her well-being, but that being said, we need all of the financial help we can get to help her go through the program and defeat some of the horrifying health giants we are facing like re-feeding syndrome. If you can donate today, we appreciate you more than can be said, if you can not - please share and spread this message wide.
Thank you!!