MALE ANOREXIA: BRYAN BIXLER IS THRIVING...AN AMAZING STORY OF RECOVERY [UPDATE: JULY 12, 2015]

"Bryan Bixler is dying. He feels it in his bones a little more each day, as if passing the mirror in his apartment and glancing at himself isn’t evidence enough."

Some photos by Mark Boster

UPDATE!
[July 12, 2015]

BRYAN BIXLER IS THRIVING!
His amazing story of recovery...
 

2009:

2015: 

To say that Bryan Bixler's road to recovery from anorexia is remarkable is an understatement.  

When I first posted about Bryan back in 2009, he was deathly ill.  Between 2009 and 2011, I lost track of Bryan until I received an update in January of 2011 from a reader (see Update below).  I was thrilled to learn that Bryan was doing so much better.

Bryan has made four appearances on Dr. Oz, the last being in December of 2013.  You will find the links to the Dr. Oz videos on Bryan's website here:  http://bryanbixler.com/category/dr-oz-bryan-bixler/

Last week, I was contacted by Bryan's lovely partner, Kristen, who updated me on Bryan's progress, which is nothing short of miraculous.  The pictures below say it all:  Bryan is healthy and happy.    

Bryan is now a Program Director and Nutritional Advisor at Hotel California by the Sea, a rehabilitation treatment centre for men in Newport Beach, California , which provides addiction treatment for dependence on alcohol and other substances. 

Please check out Bryan's profile at this link:

https://www.hotelcaliforniabythesea.com/about/clinical-staff/bryan-bixler/

For those of you who are suffering from anorexia, bulimia, and other EDs and see recovery as daunting or impossible, Bryan's journey is evidence that once you take that first step, you CAN recover.

 Below are two beautiful and inspirational quotes that Brian has posted on social media: 

"The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers."
~ Unknown


"Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity."
~ Pema Chödrön

Please take time to read my earlier posts below about Bryan's journey...

 

UPDATE!  
[January 30, 2011]

Many thanks to "C." for this update on Bryan sent to me on December 30th, 2010:

"I don't know if you're aware that Bryan Bixler was back on the Dr. Oz show on Nov. 27 - and he's made astounding progress. It brought tears to my eyes to see how much better he is doing.
Here are the links to watch the show:

Part 1
http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/bryan-blixer-battling-anorexia-pt-1
 
Part 2
http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/bryan-blixer-battling-anorexia-pt-2
 
Part 3
http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/bryan-blixer-battling-anorexia-pt-3

~~~~~

"Bryan Bixler suffers from anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder that causes him to deprive himself of enough food. He wants to get well, but the treatment Medi-Cal will cover falls short.
By Dana Parsons
6:29 PM PDT, April 2, 2009
"Bryan Bixler is dying.

Bryan Bixler feels he can't escape the truth in the mirror. At 39 years old, 5 foot 9 and 82 pounds, he is growing weaker by the day

He feels it in his bones a little more each day, as if passing the mirror in his Laguna Beach apartment and glancing at himself isn't evidence enough. Here's what greets him: sunken eyes, paper-thin arms and legs that hang like a puppet's, the slow-motion gait that he fears will define his movements for the rest of his days. What happened, he wonders, to that young man who once ran half-marathons?

It's all so crazy. That's what he tells himself. Dying a bit more every day and knowing how to fix it but being unable to do it. Knowing that if he would just start eating like a normal person, he'd give himself a fighting chance.

But he's not a normal person, not anymore. Not at 5 feet 9 and 82 pounds. Not when he's got a master's degree and knows how the body works and yet can't make himself fix spaghetti or drink a chocolate malt.

Bixler is 39 and anorexic, suffering from an eating disorder traditionally associated with young women but which generally has been thought to include a 5% to 10% male component. In recent years, however, some researchers suggest that figure may be approaching 15%.

He doesn't remember a day or week or month that he turned the corner and inexorably headed down the path to anorexia nervosa, but he and family members think it was a slow-moving journey that started in his teens. He remembers those years as a time when his parents went through a difficult divorce and he was simultaneously caught up in the fitness craze and bent on avoiding junk food.

"I was Mr. Healthy," he says. "I was a vegetarian, I wanted to be a runner. Before I knew it, I lost weight without realizing it."

Bixler holds a photo of himself and his sister, Kimberly Leeds, from high school days

As he moved through his 20s, the disorder plunged him into what he calls "the vortex," a swirling downward spiral of weight loss and a deepening inability to reverse course.

But if there was a time back then when Bixler either denied he was anorexic or thought people were overreacting to his looks, those days are gone. "I see when I look in a mirror a walking caricature of a human being," he says. "A skeleton."

But what's different now than, say, even a year or so ago is a new resoluteness. The most primal cause of all.

"I want to live," he says.

To do that, he believes, he needs intensive coordinated treatment at an eating disorder center. Bixler's Medi-Cal insurance would pay for medical help and psychiatric or psychological treatment -- through care providers Kaiser Permanente and the Orange County Health Care Agency -- but not for long-term coordinated treatment at an eating disorder clinic.

The gap between what he needs and what his insurance will cover has been played out around the country. Many insurance companies increasingly have questioned the need for long-term residential treatment programs and balked at paying the high costs for them.

Seven years ago, with his parents footing the bill, Bixler spent several months at a treatment center in Wisconsin. Even though his weight climbed from 92 pounds to 120, he considered it a prison. When his parents' money ran out, he left and immediately relapsed.

Last fall, Bixler returned to the Wisconsin center but stayed only six days. Assigned to a psychiatric unit, he refused treatment, and his parents told him they could no longer afford the bill.

Since then, Bixler insists, he's seen the light and would stay in a long-term treatment program as long as it took. The only other option, he says, is death. "Obviously, my way is not working."

Neither is the limited psychological or psychiatric care he can get through Medi-Cal, says Terry Schwartz, medical director at an eating disorders program at UC San Diego. She supervised a recent psychiatric exam of Bixler, which he requested in the hope that it would bolster a claim he's made with the state for increased Medi-Cal coverage. The claim is pending.

Bixler isn't at an acute stage, Schwartz says, but his laboratory results and weight put him at "high risk" of dying from anorexia. American Psychiatric Assn. guidelines alone, she says, put him in the category of someone who needs either inpatient or residential care.

What he needs is a coordinated program that would run the gamut of medical, psychological, psychiatric, nutritional and dietary treatment. Bixler would be most vulnerable, she says, to sudden cardiac death or an inability to fight off an infection because of his depleted white blood cell count.

While convinced it's nowhere near what he needs, Bixler still avails himself of the counseling services offered through the county and Medi-Cal. If nothing else, he reasons, it'll perhaps send a signal that he's trying to play ball.

On his more charitable days, Bixler tries to avoid recriminations.

"I'm not blaming anybody," he says, "not Kaiser, not the county. I try not to blame myself, because of course I feel like I caused it. For me, it's the anger, the sadness that a life doesn't mean anything unless you have money."

In his 20s, before he fully grasped what was happening to him, Bixler saw a future for himself. With degrees from UC San Diego and the University of Georgia, Bixler wanted to work in the education department of zoos or aquariums. Instead, the eating disorder overtook him, and after short stints at two zoos and teaching while a graduate student, he went on full-time disability nine years ago.

He subsists on Social Security and lives in a studio apartment with a view of the Pacific Ocean, the beneficiary of cheap rent because his parents own the building.

He typically sleeps until late morning and stays up late. His sister, Kimberly Leeds, thinks that's so he can avoid normal social contacts and justify living his life mostly in the night.

Bixler has always been close to his sister, Kimberly

She's the one who pulled his shirt over his head about 15 years ago and made him look at his rib cage. "Look at yourself," she said. "How can you think you're OK?"

Bixler is growing weaker by the day

Even though she understands the disorder, her brother's eating habits both cause her to marvel and madden her.

"He will not eat any dairy, but he eats frozen yogurt all the time," she says. "He won't eat certain lettuce because it gets caught in his teeth, but he will eat iceberg lettuce. He'll eat popcorn all night long but won't eat roast beef because it sticks in his teeth."

Bixler, his nephews, his sister and her husband, Clay, say grace

If they go out to eat, she says, "He can't order something off the menu. There are about five or six statements that have to go along with it." Forget rice or beans, if that comes with the entree. He has to have shredded lettuce and cilantro on the side. He will eat vegetables and protein foods, but carbohydrates are a non-starter, she says.

Leeds may be frustrated, but she hasn't given up on her brother. To the contrary, she's joined him in his fight to get more extensive care.

Their parents, she says, have been dealing with the situation for half of Bryan's life and it is wearying.

"Mother feels like she's done everything. She's mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted," Leeds says. "Her life has been dedicated to him for the last 20 years."

All of which Bixler knows and which makes him sigh.

His father tells him he's not trying hard enough. What's so hard about fixing a bowl of oatmeal and eating it? They have shelled out the money before and might again, but the failing economy has hurt their finances.

"They blame me, their blame reinforces my own self-blame," he says. "I'm my own worst critic. I look in the mirror at night, saying I'm insane. What's wrong with me?"

He knows the answer, of course: a disorder with numerous dark corners that enveloped and then overwhelmed him.

Bixler reads to his nephews, Jeremy and Elliott Leeds, at his sister's home

"I can't understand why I can't do what a 6-year-old can do -- feed myself." "



Link:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-anorexia-dying3-2009apr03,0,7712747,full.story

Audio slideshow:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-anorexia-ss,0,848624.htmlstory

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JEREMY GILLITZER: A SHADOW OF HIS FORMER SELF [Update: REST IN PEACE, JEREMY]

(1971 - 2010)

Yesterday, I learned that Jeremy had suddenly passed away on June 1st, 2010, at the age of 38. According to this article, Jeremy weighed only 66 pounds at the time of his death.

Up until the time of his death, Jeremy had been working at the US Census Bureau, Minneapolis office.

I can't tell you how devastated I was to learn of Jeremy's passing. I got to know him through his emails and he was such a lovely person, dedicated to spreading the word about the deadly effects of eating disorders, even as he continued to struggle with his own. He will be sorely missed by his family, friends, and all of those he touched with his story of his lengthy struggle.

Jeremy, may you finally find the peace that eluded you in life. Shine on.

(Click to enlarge)

Jeremy's Obituary

ORIGINAL POST:

For Jeremy Gillitzer, his days as a male model must seem light years away.

Jeremy's face and body have morphed from well-chiselled to skeletal. He weighs only 90 pounds (41kgs) and has been anorexic and bulimic for over 25 years. Jeremy will be turning 38 years old in a few days time, on August 24, 2009.

Here is Jeremy's story...

From CityPages.com:

"Boy, Interrupted

By Kevin Hoffman

Published on October 30, 2007

"At first I worried I'd have trouble picking Jeremy out of the crowd—Caribou Coffee was packed—but there was no mistaking him. "Gaunt" isn't the word. He's fragile. Brittle. His skin is stretched so tight over his temples that you can practically see his thoughts.

All the seats were taken, so we carried our coffee next door to Subway. The restaurant was empty, but Jeremy insisted on asking permission to sit down. "We're going to order before we leave," he promised. Although Jeremy's appearance would seem to suggest otherwise, the guy making sandwiches wasn't inclined to argue.

A half-hour later, Jeremy approached the counter again and dug his hand into his pocket, plucking out a tiny, folded-up coupon. It entitled him to a kids' meal—a third the size of an adult sub. Jeremy got a scoop of tuna fish on wheat, a small milk, a four-ounce yogurt, and a cookie.

He took his meal home to his downtown Minneapolis condo, ate it in small bites, then vomited it down the drain.

Jeremy may be an extreme example, but more men than ever are suffering from eating disorders. Earlier this year, Harvard researchers released the results of the first major nationwide mental health survey to include eating disorders. It found that men accounted for 25 percent of anorexia and bulimia cases and a full 40 percent of binge eaters. "These disorders are less common in men, but maybe not quite as rare as we once thought," says Dr. James I. Hudson, the study's lead author.

There's even a tabloid-friendly name for the disorder: manorexia. The neologism was apparently coined by Dennis Quaid, who used it in an interview with Best Life to describe his experience of losing 40 pounds to play Doc Holliday in 1994's Wyatt Earp. "I'd look in the mirror and see a 180-pound guy, even though I was 138 pounds," Quaid said.

Other celebrities rumored to have suffered from "manorexia" include Ethan Hawke and Billy Bob Thornton (post-Angelina Jolie).

"There's a lot of reason to believe that body image concerns are increasing in both women and men," says Dr. Hudson.

Jeremy, who asked that his last name be withheld to protect his privacy, entered the world in St. Paul on August 23, 1971, an event he'd later sum up in four words: "The spawn is born." His biological dad didn't stick around, and his mother, who worked at a department store, married a carpenter, who dutifully adopted Jeremy.

"The relationship with my stepdad was horrible; he treated me like shit," Jeremy says. "He acted like I was an intruder in his home."

Jeremy was a pudgy kid, still carrying his baby fat, and his weight was a frequent target for his stepfather's ire. "He'd always say I was fat, or needed to lose weight," Jeremy says.

If that wasn't enough, Jeremy was going through puberty and confronting the fact that he was gay. The very thought of it horrified him. He could only imagine how his stepdad would react. And what about his grandparents, with whom he played Yahtzee?

Then, when he was 12, Jeremy discovered a solution to both problems: starvation.

"It serves two purposes," Jeremy says. "It serves a very applied purpose in that if you're doing the behaviors, you don't have time to think about being gay. And also being malnourished, you don't feel sexual, so you don't have to worry about being gay or straight."

Daralyn Sachs, a childhood friend of Jeremy's, remembers him as an emotionally needy boy who was always looking for an excuse to get out of his house. If they had a play date for Saturday morning, he'd be at her house bright and early at 7:00 a.m.

"He'd eat dinner at our house—I'm sure he would sleep over if he could," she says. "He would go from house to house, searching for somewhere to be other than home."

Within months of starting his crash diet, Jeremy was suffering advanced symptoms of starvation. He was sensitive to cold and had grown a fine coat of body hair. He saw a doctor in November 1983 who took one look at the 85-pound boy and diagnosed him with anorexia nervosa.

A month later, after losing nine more pounds, Jeremy entered Children's Hospital of St. Paul. "Jeremy is a 12-year-old boy admitted for evaluation and treatment of anorexia nervosa," reads the December 15, 1983 evaluation. "He is somewhat irritable and is having difficulty concentrating on his schoolwork. He is substantially small for his age."

The doctors employed a carrot-and-stick approach, with mixed success. Jeremy was allowed to eat anything he wanted, but his television, telephone, and visiting privileges would be taken away if he didn't meet goals for gaining back the weight. Jeremy put back on the pounds and was discharged after a month, but within a year of returning home, he was back to his bad habits.

By 14, Jeremy was stealing laxatives from the local pharmacy and taking the round pink pills by the handful. At his worst, he swallowed 30 Correctols at once. "I was throwing up, and turning around and sitting down and going to the bathroom, and throwing up, 'cause I was so sick," Jeremy says. "But sometimes I would lose seven pounds from before-and-after by taking those pills. That's in an hour, and it's all water."

Jeremy learned how to properly purge when he was sent to Station 62—the adult psychiatric ward of the University of Minnesota Hospital. An older patient named Diane had been throwing up so long, she wore dentures though she was only in her late 20s. "She kind of taught me how to do it," Jeremy says. "Taught me to drink a lot of water to get it all up, and to eat certain foods that are easier." Rice, for example, would still be coming up hours after he ate it. "Whereas things that are liquid are obviously easy to throw up—milk, yogurt, what else? Anything that's liquid or meltable. Soup without all the stuff in it."

Jeremy remembers Station 62 as a veritable Tower of London. To ensure he wouldn't puke up his food, he was confined to a geriatric chair for hours after each meal, he says. When he failed to make weight or acted out, he was sent to solitary confinement in the "Quiet Room"—a tiny cell with little more than a bare mattress.

Jeremy took to puking in protest. "People would look at it and they'd be astounded," Jeremy remembers. "But after a while they got used to it and just gave me a rag and disinfectant spray and had me clean it up."

As Jeremy cycled through treatment centers, he devised ever more elaborate ways to hide his vomit from the staff. "I'd do things to get around them, like throw up in big cups and then hide them, both in the day room and in my room. I would throw up in the washing machine and run it through the rinse cycle—I did that once, I shouldn't say I did that regularly. But it's amazing what you'll do."

Eventually, Jeremy's insurance ran out, and in order to continue treatment, he was committed to what was then known as Anoka State Hospital. It was just as restrictive as Station 62, but with a much more volatile clientele. "The first night I was there, a girl who was schizophrenic started her mattress on fire and we were evacuated into a barbed-wire courtyard," Jeremy says. "It's kind of a lot of shit for an 18-year-old to experience."

A psychiatric evaluation prepared around this time reveals the depth of Jeremy's despondence. "During the first few months of hospitalization the patient was obsessed with thoughts of suicide," it reads. "He attempted to choke himself with a towel and again with a belt.... He also states that he has cut his finger tips with razor blades in the past because he felt so numb and needed to know that he could feel something."

After a year at Anoka, Jeremy was discharged, though he wasn't cured, and he moved in with his grandparents. When he grew tired of arranging his binging and purging around their schedule, Jeremy moved into the first apartment of his own.

But try as he might, Jeremy couldn't have a normal life. He hoarded food like a survivalist, his pantries bursting with dozens of boxes of breakfast cereal. When his landlord discovered he was storing food on the patio, Jeremy received a sternly worded letter. "Please don't force me to go to the State Health Department," it said. "You're a nice young man and I don't want this to end in eviction for you."

It couldn't be avoided. Jeremy was kicked out.

Then something amazing happened: Jeremy got better. At 21 years old, he came out of the closet. "It took a couple of years, and it was kind of exploring on my own, and then it was telling a trusted family member, and then another one of them, and then friends, and the next thing you know, you're in drag," Jeremy says with a laugh. Gradually, he stopped binging and purging. The compulsion lifted like a forgotten grudge.

Freed of his symptoms, Jeremy enrolled at the U of M—this time as a student rather than a patient. He pursued his interest in political science, becoming so convinced that he would one day run for office that he had "Jeremy's Campaign for Congress" emblazoned on his checks.

Jeremy in his Calvins in 1997

He certainly looked the part. After applying the same rigor to bodybuilding that he'd used in starving himself, the waif sprouted bulging pecs and six-pack abs. He found work as a model and had a few blink-and-you-miss-it cameos in movies—he played a guy holding a cup of soda near an elevator in Mallrats.

"It was a wonderful time of my life," Jeremy says.

In 2004, everything fell apart. Jeremy's relationship with his first and only long-term boyfriend ended in a torrent of jealousy and hurt feelings. Then his mother fell seriously ill. Two car accidents within a month pushed him over the edge. Overwhelmed, Jeremy returned to the comfort of his old routine.

"The actual act of purging relieves anxiety—physiologically, it's one of the things it does," Jeremy says.

By January 1, 2007, Jeremy was deep in the throes of his eating disorder. "So far, 2007 has been much like 2006 ended," he wrote on his blog. "I woke up twice during the night and binged and purged. Later this morning, I will be going to circuit training class at 8:30. I might also go to spin class immediately following if I feel up to it."

Jeremy started a blog in the hopes of meeting other males with eating disorders, but he soon fell in with an online sisterhood of anorexics. They offered sympathy and comfort, especially when one of their own succumbed. "I was just reading Feisty Frida's Blog and found out the horrible news that Leah just died from her eating disorder," Jeremy wrote on January 10. "It makes me very angry at this awful disease."

Jeremy wasn't much better off. Just five days later, he found himself short of breath after his spin class, his fingers turning blue even though he wasn't cold. Jeremy called a doctor friend and briefly considered going to the hospital, but drank some juice and felt better. Later that night, he binged and purged.

He was withering away; you'd have to be blind not to see it. Finally, the manager of his gym politely asked him to stop coming until he got healthier. It was a liability issue, she explained.

Though no longer exercising, Jeremy continued to shed pounds. On March 16, he weighed 109. Just a month later, he was down to 102 pounds. "Two more pounds..." he wrote on his blog. "And then what? I'll be happy all of the sudden?"

Two weeks later he hit 99, and he wasn't anywhere near happy.

Guess Who?

My hair is falling out and growing on my body...to keep me warm.

My gums are receding.

My reproductive system is dormant...or dead.

I am hunchbacked because my muscles cannot support my neck.

I am extremely constipated.

I have a bedsore on my tailbone from the friction.

An 80-year-old lady, you ask? No, a 35-year-old man.

—Posted on Jeremy's blog on June 15, 2007

If there's one thing Jeremy won't abide, it's questions about whether he's going to enter treatment. As far as he's concerned, that's nobody's business but his own. If you'd experienced what he's been through at hospitals, he says, you'd understand.

Just a few weeks ago, he seemed resigned to death.

"If I'm supposed to be here in a year, I'll be here," he said. "I figure it can't be worse than the amount I've suffered to date, so I'm not afraid of that part of it. The only thing I'm really afraid of is if there was something big I was supposed to do and I wasn't able to do it. That's my only fear."

Since then, his mood seems to have brightened. He is considering getting treatment at Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park, the best local facility for people with eating disorders. He talks about writing a memoir and offering his services as a public speaker. Maybe that's the "something big" he's supposed to do, he says.

Sachs, now a 37-year-old mother of two young boys, hopes her childhood friend will begin the journey to recovery. "I've never seen him this bad," she says. "To me, you always see him the way he should be, and so now when I look at him, I think it's horrible. When I look at him I want to cry."

On January 9th, 2009, Kevin Hoffman's story on Jeremy, Boy, Interrupted, was picked by Inside Edition in its roundup of notable 2008 stories. Congratulations, Kevin, on your compelling story.

And below...the video, Boy, Interrupted: One Man's Struggle with an Eating Disorder, from CityPagesMN, from November 2007, which has this note:

Jeremy, a 36-year-old suffering from anorexia and bulimia, was profiled in City Pages. In this footage from more than a year ago (2006), we see a healthier Jeremy...

For those of you who have read the story, this footage takes place after Jeremy started his blog, but before he stopped going to his gym because of the potential liability issue.

Please take a moment to read Jeremy's blog. He's been to hell and back.

Start here with his first post:

Introduction


(((Jeremy)))

~ Medusa

AN UPDATE FROM JEREMY:

"I would like to speak about my eating disorder to schools, companies, and any organizations that will benefit from my suffering. I know this would help me too.

If anyone knows someone that wants me to speak extemporaneously and answer questions, please let me know. Love, Jeremy."

If you would like to contact Jeremy about a speaking engagement, please send him an e-mail at jeremygillitzer@aol.com.

Many thanks.

~ Medusa

Links:
http://www.citypages.com/2007-10-31/news/boy-interrupted/
http://news.xinhuanet.com/
http://lc.eastday.com

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

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.

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 with her father Frank on her 18th birthday
(January 5/07)

Photo by Jacky Ghossein

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

Links:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/lifeandstyle/lifematters/adams-descent-into-hell-130kg-at-15-45kg-and-desperate-at-23/2009/03/22/1237656740303.html
http://www.02.01.snc1.facebook.com/

http://www.2medusa.com/2009/02/anorexia-bulimia-catena-dimauro-another.html

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MALE ANOREXIA & BULIMIA: AN UPDATE FROM JOHNNY ON ANOREXIA...

In an earlier blog post, I introduced you to Johnny Giovanni Righini who has posted videos on YouTube which chronicle his life with anorexia, bulimia, and orthorexia nervosa.

For several weeks, Johnny was MIA. He posted a short video saying that he was very ill. I feared the worst.

Thankfully, Johnny survived his most recent illness and has uploaded two videos in the past few days. His latest video details his continuing struggle with anorexia and bulimia.

If you are suffering with an eating disorder, please take a moment to listen to Johnny's most recent message:

"Morning thoughts on issues: eating disorders/anorexia nervosa - that I've been dealing with lately."

Thoughts and Anorexic Distortions

To view my earlier post (including videos) on Johnny, please click here:

MALE ANOREXIA & BULIMIA: ANOREXIA AND BULIMIA NOT ONLY AFFECT WOMEN

To view Johnny's other videos, please click here:

http://youtube.com/user/MyOwnStickFigure

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MALE ANOREXIA & BULIMIA: ANOREXIA AND BULIMIA NOT ONLY AFFECT WOMEN...

Johnny Giovanni Righini: "One male's journey through anorexia, bulimia and orthorexia nervosa... "

These remarkable videos by Johnny Righini (MyOwnStickFigure) should be seen by anyone contemplating ANY starvation diet.

I would ask that after viewing them you leave a comment of encouragement for Johnny on his YouTube page here http://youtube.com/user/MyOwnStickFigure where more of his videos are listed. Thank you.

Anorexic Attack: Part 1...

Anorexic Attack: Part 2...

Checking in, progress, dinner...

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