Monday, March 30, 2009

MALE ANOREXIA: ADAM JASIULEC BATTLES FOR HIS LIFE...

Adam Jasiulec

male anorexia-anorexic-Adam Jasiulec Adam Jasiulec, with his grandmother, Lena Turner, at her home in Newcastle
Photo: Janie Barrett



Worldwide, the incidence of male anorexia is increasing in leaps and bounds.
I came across this heartbreaking story of Adam Jasiulec last week. Adam was a friend of Catena di Mauro's. Catena battled anorexia for 7 years and died last month (February 2009). 


"Adam's descent into hell: 130kg at 15, 45kg and desperate at 23

Caroline Marcus
March 22, 2009

IT IS hard to believe to look at him now but Adam Jasiulec was bullied as a boy for being overweight.

The 23-year-old anorexic from Newcastle has spent the past eight years in his own "personal hell", with one specialist declaring him one of the most severe cases she had seen in three decades.

Adam was diagnosed with anorexia at 15 after five years of systematic bullying in various NSW schools.

At 130 kilograms and with a shy, sensitive personality, he was an easy target for his assailants - and his teachers did nothing to stop it. The bullying became so bad he would lock himself in toilet cubicles during classes and lunchtime. Soon he was skipping school, sometimes hiding behind his house all day.

When his parents divorced and he moved with his mother, Deborah, to Leeton, in country NSW, the then 13-year-old became even more isolated. He started becoming obsessed with losing weight, starting a restrictive diet and training for up to four hours a day. Within four months, he had lost 70 kilograms.

Eventually, his muscles depleted to the stage where his body was beginning to eat itself. The blood vessels under his eyes burst.

At 16 and weighing just 40 kilograms, Adam was admitted to the psychiatric ward of Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney.

In three months he added 20 kilograms and was discharged, only to relapse immediately, due, he said, mainly to a lack of outpatient support.

male anorexia-anorexic-Adam Jasiulec Adam Jasiulec

A year later, he was readmitted and the pattern repeated itself, three more times.

Dissatisfied with the lack of state services available for her son and unable to afford private treatment at a cost thousands of dollars, Mrs Jasiulec moved them to Broadbeach, Queensland.

Last month, Adam collapsed and fell into a coma. He was admitted to the Gold Coast Hospital, where he spent three weeks recovering. He was discharged two weeks ago.

Adam hopes a 40-week program with a psychologist, which will begin next month, will finally see him overcome the debilitating disease. "At my stage I just really, really want to recover and beat this," Adam told The Sun-Herald on Friday.

He said he was saddened to learn of the death of his friend Catena Di Mauro to anorexia at RPA. She was 20.

"I would do absolutely anything I could to be able to help people and prevent more deaths - that, I feel, is my goal in life," he said. "And for people to be able to have the services [available] when they get out of hospital."

To read more about Adam's friend, Catena Di Mauro, please click the link below:



Catena Di Mauro, anorexiaCatena Di Mauro with her father Frank on her 18th birthday
(January 5/07)
Photo by Jacky Ghossein


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Wednesday, March 18, 2009

MEDUSA'S HAVING A FACELIFT...



Spring is around the corner and as I always get restless and bored at this time of year, I decided to change the background colour on my website and add a few little doodads. Seemed like a great idea at the time.

All was going well until I realized that many of my posts are now unreadable because the text colour has blended into the black background. Nice. Real nice.

So I'm slowly going through my posts, correcting the problem. I'll be finished around the 12th of never.

In the meantime, if you're having trouble reading the text, just highlight it and you'll be good to go...hopefully.





Link to picture:



http://current.com/items/88870377/reason_1_not_to_get_a_face_lift.htm

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Tuesday, March 17, 2009

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY !




Remembering with love my dear Irish grandfather, Philip Henry, born in Coleraine...



Go n-eírí an bóthar leat.


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Tuesday, March 10, 2009

ANOREXIA & BULIMIA: CATENA DI MAURO, ANOTHER TRAGIC DEATH...(Updated with a comment from PAOLO DI MAURO, Catena's twin brother)

anorexia, bulimia, Catena DiMauro
Catena Di Mauro with her father Frank on her 18th birthday
(January 5/07)
Photo by Jacky Ghossein


I received the following comment today from Paolo Di Mauro, Catena's twin brother . It is heartbreaking...

"My name is Paolo . And im the twin brother of catena .. Its been very hard and no words can even come close to describe to you how im feeling at this present time. I witnessed my sister slowly but surely deteriorate over her 7 years battle with this dieses. Not only did my sister have to fight her own demons she was also fighting the Hospital staff off how they were treating her and acting towards her . My father was standing up for her rights and making sure she was looked after.. Once the Hospital realized this . They simple treated my sister worse and not only that .. They showed no respect towards my father constantly wanting to take guardianship away from him . Not allowing me or my father to see catena which would drive her insane. They caused more problems to catena which in the long run made her worse caused stress upon my family as well.

On more then lets say 30- 40 occasions because that how many times it accrued catena was sent home only if her blood test results were cleared . Upon say 4-5 hours later catena would either have kidney failure. Faint, heart pains. We would rush her back and she would then have another blood test and the result would be that she is unstable . So why did the Doctors or nurses send her home in the first place . This wasn’t on one occasion this happened. It accrued so many times when they sent her home saying she was OK . And then couple hours later her life would be at risk . My optioned is they simple tired to get RIDD of her.

They gave her a room. With a bathroom in there .. So she could be privileged and in my eyes encouraged to purge . that’s like giving an alcoholic keys to a pub across the road they aren’t helping the situation . They would let her eat Orally and then she would obviously go and purge it up . With Ease .. Shortly after the nurse would approach her and say. Catena because you have thrown up you must have a supplement popper drink to replace what she has just thrown up. Catena would say No they would ask another 3-4 times she would say no . then they would give her the OPTION of having the tube. Anyone one would say No to that .. So then you ask what happens .. They simple put her away in a room no padded walls. Nothing a isolated dark room. Were shed be in there crying for hours like it was detention . NOW Is this how you treat this .. Look everyone this is just like off the top of my head one incident but let me assure you there is SO SO many more incidents that have happened like this or not even worse.

This is a mental disease which becomes physical. And what people I think forget is that they treat the physical more than the mental . How can my sister or anyone get better if they are only attempting to treat the physical part of the disorder. They can never succeed unless the person brain starts to function normally . Which would involve intense counselling continuously and attack the real problem which is in the brain under depression . Once they can start to handle that the person would slowly get better on the physical state .and overall recover . Otherwise these nurses and doctors are just simple going to go wrong again and cost more lives. By just tackling the physical part of the disorder the person is going to become like a balloon he/she weight will just plunder Up and down .And this cannot help that person in a physical way and mental way.

Something needs to be done Now. Its gone on for far to long. Enough is enough how many lives and families need to be scared before people start to realize that they need proper facilities and doctors treating this disease.

Paolo Di Mauro"


Paolo, my heart breaks for you and your father. What a horrific experience you both have been through. Please accept my sincerest condolences on the loss of your dear sister.

The points you make in your message are so true. It is imperative people suffering from eating disorders receive psychological help. Without that, recovery is impossible.

Many thanks for taking the time to write, Paolo. Again, my deepest sympathy on the loss of Catena.

May you and your father find peace...

Medusa
xoxo

~~~~~~~~~~
Original post:

From The Sydney Morning Herald:
by Caroline Marcus
January 14, 2007:

"Frank Di Mauro did not know if his only daughter would live to see her 18th birthday. Her body ravaged by anorexia and bulimia, Catena Di Mauro weighed just 28 kilograms as the January 5 milestone approached.

Her six-year obsession with starving and purging herself had reduced her to a skeleton, and left her father exhausted from battling the public health system.

In a rare moment of hope, Mr Di Mauro took Catena out of the psychiatric ward of Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and home to Lilyfield to mark her birthday. Days later she was rushed back to the cardiology ward, where she remained last night, dangerously ill, her weight having fallen to 26 kilograms, the equivalent of an average eight-year-old.

"She could have a heart attack at any time," Mr Di Mauro said. "It is heartbreaking for me."

When Catena was 12, her mother's death from kidney failure triggered a terrible obsession in the previously happy girl, whose 63-kilogram body began to waste away.

Her father began finding food hidden in the house and garden. Catena began to exercise obsessively in her room and run up huge bills at the corner store, buying food to binge eat then vomit up. Despite Catena's rapid weight loss and disturbing habits, Mr Di Mauro said doctors refused to hospitalise her, telling him she was "not sick enough".

At 14, she became sick enough. She was taken out of school and admitted to the Children's Hospital at Westmead. When she turned 15, her father said he was told she could no longer be treated in the children's unit and would have to be admitted to an adult psychiatric ward at RPA. The aim was for her to put on one to two kilograms. Instead, her weight plunged to 30 kilograms. The next year, her father says, a male patient attempted to rape her.

Despite occasional signs of improvement, her condition has always later deteriorated, culminating in a coma last year.

"It is nearly a year to the day that she was dying in John Hunter Hospital [in Newcastle] and here we are in the same scenario again," Mr Di Mauro said. "She can't hang on much longer like that."

What distresses him most is that doctors refused to readmit Catena when she was an already alarming 36 kilograms in September; it was not until Boxing Day that staff decided she could be hospitalised.

"The system has failed, as far as my daughter is concerned," Mr Di Mauro said. "Our children are just slowly dying away in the background and nobody knows about it.

"It's just amazing that a big state like NSW is the worst for anorexia. There is just nothing out there for these kids.

"I don't want to give up on Catena because I know she can be helped."

An invalid pensioner, Mr Di Mauro said he asked NSW Health Minister John Hatzistergos to pay for his daughter to be treated at a private hospital. The minister had replied that the hospital in question did not have the resources his daughter required, he said.

Mr Hatzistergos wrote to Mr Di Mauro last month to advise that Sydney South West Area Health Service would arrange an external review of his daughter's treatment plan, but Mr Di Mauro said he had heard nothing since.

A worldwide charter for eating disorders is set to be launched here next month.
Jan Cullis, head of the Bronte Foundation, an eating disorders charity, said there was a lot of dissatisfaction about treatments in Australia."


And this sad update on Catena published last week in The Daily Telegraph...

by Kate Sikora
February 11, 2009:

Catena DiMauro, anorexia, bulimia Catena Di Mauro and her father, Frank



"As Catena Di Mauro left her grandmother's home last week, she whispered the words "You remember I love you".

They were the last words she said to her family before she lost a seven-year battle with anorexia nervosa.

The 20-year-old Sydney woman died on Saturday, her frail body weighing just 32kg. Her ordeal of starving and purging was witnessed by her twin brother Paolo and father Frank, who yesterday paid tribute to his brave daughter.

Catena's obsession with food was triggered by the death of her mother when she was 11.

Becoming depressed, the young girl quickly began to lose weight.

By the time she began high school, she was hiding food and her healthy 63kg body began wasting away.

But despite pleas to doctors that his daughter was sick, Mr Di Mauro was told she "was not sick enough".

It was not until she was 15 that she was admitted to an adult psychiatric ward at Royal Prince Alfred. Her ravaged body withered away to 26kg, the equivalent of an eight-year-old.

While Catena, whose funeral is on Friday, fought her own demons, her invalid father took on the health system and government.

Unable to watch his daughter waste away in a hospital, Mr Di Mauro waged a public fight for adequate treatment centres to be built.

Even through his grief yesterday, he pledged to keep campaigning.

In NSW there are 500 cases of anorexia each year and 20 per cent die."



“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”

~Norman Cousins

Rest in peace, Catena...


Links:

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Monday, March 9, 2009

DON'T CHA WISH YOUR GIRLFRIEND WAS HOT LIKE ME?




(Be sure to click on the HQ button to watch in high quality, and turn up your speakers...LOUD :^)

T-Mobile's "Life's for Sharing" advertisement shot in the Liverpool Street Station, London, UK.

Guaranteed to bring a smile to your face :^)

The reaction of those who witnessed it...



And the making of the T-Mobile ad:

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Friday, March 6, 2009

PRO ANA MIA ? LOOKING FOR THINSPIRATION ?

anorexia-thinspiration-model-pro-ana-anorexia-bulimia


Be careful what you wish for...


Aimee Moore, anorexia

Aimee Moore (before anorexia and bulimia)


Aimee Moore, anorexia

Aimee Moore (after)



**********

legs, anorexic model

anorexia, legs of 77-year-old-woman

"77-year-old lady with anorexia admitted to hospital. ..Due to her poor general medical health with cardiac and renal failure, no invasive investigations were performed... Removal of the leg ulcer dressings revealed this pigmented "wound" affecting the left lower leg"



**********


Keira Knightly, anorexia

Keira Knightley



anorexic older woman


**********


hand

hand, 46-year-old anorexic woman

Hand of an anorexic 46-year-old woman



**********

Tara Reid, anorexia

Tara Reid



anorexic, anorexia, Italian countess

Italian Countess (no, this is not Donatella Versace)


**********


girl in a bikini

anorexic older woman, bikini

anorexic older woman, bikini


**********


Samantha Kendall, before anorexia
Samantha Kendall (before anorexia and bulimia)



Samantha Kendall, anorexia

Samantha Kendall, Rest in Peace





Links:

www.nothinspiration.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/anorexia-thinspiration-model-pro-ana.jpg
www.zimbio.com
www.ahlanlive.com
www.thefindbuzz.com/fashion
thundermatt.com/2008/07/
www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/20/1984080.htm
www.d.umn.edu/~loche006/beauty.html
www.nih.gov/about/nihphotos.htm
www.jle.com/en/revues/medecine/ejd/e-docs/00/01/87/72/article.phtml?fichier=images.htm

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