The Eating Disorder Conversation

Please pray for Jack…my 20-year-old has to write one paragraph by next Wednesday.  I shouldn’t be so flip, the subject isn’t exactly a slam dunk for a young kid. “I have to write about what humanity looks like dad – seriously, chat GPT can’t even help me!” So, I told him about Carrie, the 29-year-old who 10 years ago sat on one of those medicine balls inside a college physical therapy clinic and finally opened up about her eating disorder. Her PT had worked on her knee pain and limited range of motion for over 2 months by that time. “I remember he would just talk to me, ask me about life, music, my goals – I don’t know, I just trusted him.” It turns out Carrie’s knee pain was masking her bulimia which started during AAU soccer and continued at college. A decade later, Carrie had recovered and became an occupational therapist, and on a rainy Tuesday in April she purposely took her agency’s farthest assignment, a 75-mile drive to see a patient who was himself recovering, only from a series of heart surgeries. “She went to see that PT Jack…the one who might just have saved her life…and that PT is your grandpa.” It took grandpa a bit to recognize Carrie after she knocked on the red front door. When he finally did, he got dizzy and needed to sit down for a few minutes, but “I didn’t mind so much” he later told me. On this day, a decade after helping this young kid open up at a time and moment in our country when it was really hard to do that, that kid had come back all grown up to thank dad for what he did—what some PTs and frontline healthcare workers do all the time. Carrie laughed about the nostalgic encounter. “I think I nearly caused him to fall when I told him who I was.” During that 90-minute visit she asked him about his life and Peter Paul & Mary record collection, his golf game, and his goals. “I remember he said he just wanted to be able to go see his grandkids perform in NYC.” Jack sighed after hearing this. “I think I get it – not sure how I can make that 1 paragraph, but humanity is the way dad took the time to really help that kid, and look at what that did for her, how that shaped her life.” When we discuss what a good outcome is in health policy, we don’t talk enough about that.