Chapter Thirty - Antelope House

Hi guys,

This chapter is my longest chapter yet and comes with trigger warnings ⚠️

In this chapter I will be talking about weight, if you are sensitive to weight, I would skip this chapter.

So enjoy!

Thanks!

Megan :)

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Chapter Thirty

Antelope House

Stopping drinking didn't end well for me.

I was brought to A&E where I was admitted and put on a drip and then later forced to have an ng tube (nasogastric tube) for the first time.

My experience with ng tubes wasn't great and I hated it, they must be forgotten to tell me to swallow because they neglected to tell me that and I choked.

I hated it so much that I kept biting holes in it; they kept trying to get me to drink but I wouldn't.

I wasn't talking, I was writing down everything I was saying.

I was so upset that I ended up slipping down my downwards spiral even more.

I wouldn't stop crying and pulling chunks of hair out of my head. It was awful because I was also SO down that I kept banging my head against the rails of the bed and had to have the sides padded; looked like a massive cot in the end. This still didn't calm me down though and no one could stop me, in the end they had to literately restrain me and inject me with lorazepam; I kept my head covered with my sheets at all times.

The ward was noisy so I ended up being brought to a side room; my parents bought me a dolphin balloon and we called id Dellilah the dolphin. 🐬

I kept pulling my tube out though and so I had to be regularly restrained to have it put back in, it was a horrible experience.

The manager if where I lived at the time refused to help restrain me because she didn't want to ruin our relationship with her but kept bringing in snacks to try to get me to eat, saying "I'm allergic to crisps, but if you eat one, I will too"

A few days later though, they tricked me by saying that I had agreed to eat and drink if they took my ng tube out.

Now baring in mind that I write things down, I don't know how they thought it would work; it did though. I agreed because I knew they expected me to do it so I did.

I think this whole hospital stay probably have me PTSD in it's self.

They tried to send me to a psychiatric ward near my parents after that but sadly failed as the bed fell through; In the end, I ended up in a place called Antelope House. Antelope House has previously been shut down by watchdog but got reopened.

I was there for 9 long months and I HATED it!

I can remember them being very mean to me and I hated it.

Eating hadn't left my mind either, although I had agreed to eat before, I started feeling guilty about eating again; this caused me to start a food journal.

In my food journal I had written my weight and times that I had weighed myself at.

I managed to convince my mum to let me buy a scales by lying to her and saying that I wanted a scales to maintain my weight, not loose weight.

They were all happy that is got to seven stone and so I lied and said I wanted to maintain.

I know I should've felt bad about lying to my mum, but at this point, I didn't; all I cared about was losing weight and I weighed myself several times a day.

Unfortunately for me, this didn't go unnoticed, someone found my diary.

They threatened to show a doctor but I refused, so they didnt. Later on though I got my scales taken away from me because they were concerned that I was using it as a way to not eat.

Well duh...

They weren't wrong there, I was using it as a way to not eat.

This brings me to not eating.

I started eating at first but then progressed to smaller and smaller portions until I was having nothing all day.

I went from eating three meals a day, to two to one, too three sandwiches a day, too two and then to one and then to three cuppa soups a day, too two, to one and then to nothing; I loved it.

The funny thing was, they took my scales away to stop me from weighing myself, but they weighed you weekly and they told you what your weight was.

In my case, I watched my weight drop and drop and I loved it, I could see my clothes getting baggier on me too and it motivated me on. Apparently, I got dangerously underweight, but I don't believe them.

They tried to bring me in food but I wouldn't touch it, I was barely drinking at this point too.

Barely drinking has it's toll on m though, I could no longer stand up without feeling faint and having to sit back down.

Unfortunately, I fainted a couple of times too and eventually got a black eye by fainting twice.

Fainting isn't a nice experience, I found that your vision would go all blurry and you'd go light headed, then the next thing you knew, you were on the floor. This happened to me all the time, even when I was queueing for my medication.

Once I finted on my own at night but didn't press the bell and so when I told them in the morning, they didn't believe me.

Why they didn't believe me is beyond me, but oh well.

I hated it at antelope house.

They even had timers for the water and you could only press the water button on the shower three times. They never told you that either, so you had to find out the hard way.