Doctors dismissed my anorexia as a phase – now I’m dying, my heart could stop at any moment

KIM Driscoll was diagnosed with a dangerous eating disorder at aged 20, despite a doctor at first telling her it was “just a phase.”

Almost 20 years on, she and her mother share how the disease took irreversible and devastating control of her life.

“After Mum gently washes my long hair, she holds my hands to help me from the bath.

Despite being as independent as I can, there are things I’m no longer able to do without help.

Even the basics, such as getting dressed, leave me so exhausted I spend large parts of every afternoon sleeping.

I am 39 years old, but my life is nearing its end, my body ravaged by more than 20 years of anorexia.

Everything I hoped for in my future when I was younger – adventures, a successful career, a loving husband and children – have been taken from me.

My doctors have told me that my heart could stop at any moment.

Growing up as the youngest of six girls, family life was mostly happy.

When I was four, my dad Jim died of cancer, aged 50, and while we missed his warmth and kindness, we still had each other.

At school, I was popular with teachers and other kids, despite also being teased for being short and having ginger hair. 

I’d always had an odd relationship with my body and food, convinced I was podgy in my early teens, though Mum reassured me it was just puppy fat.

I was a fussy eater, and at meals I’d push food around and do things like pick peas out of my shepherd’s pie. 

Things got worse when I was 18 and discovered that a boyfriend had cheated on me.

Too heartbroken to eat, I survived on handfuls of dry cereal and coffee laden with sugar.

A seed was planted in my mind – I couldn’t control things like a boyfriend’s behaviour or Dad’s death, but I could control what I put in my body.

I started bingeing, then purging, plus taking vast numbers of laxatives.

I’d starve myself all day while working as a holistic therapist in a hospital, then by night I’d stuff myself with a takeaway, pasta and crisps, before secretly making myself sick.

At first, as my weight dropped, people would tell me I looked “amazing”, which only encouraged me and made me believe what I was doing wasn’t a problem. 

In 2003, aged 19, I decided to enter Miss Lowestoft, a local beauty pageant.

By then, my eating disorder was in full flow.

To my amazement, I was invited to the final.

Though very short at 4ft 11in and not a classic beauty, I felt beautiful in my size-6 prom dress and answered the judge’s questions with humour.

I was stunned to be crowned the winner.

But when I got home with my £250 cheque, I binged on a celebratory Chinese takeaway, then threw it all up.

It took a year for my then-boyfriend to find out what I was doing, and Mum realised not long after.

They’d noticed me going to the bathroom after meals, heard me vomiting and found laxatives in my bedroom.

We began to argue about my health, them putting pressure on me to see my GP, and me claiming there was nothing wrong.

Eventually, I agreed to speak to a doctor, but the GP simply claimed it was all just as a phase I’d grow out of.

That was the start of two years of me toing and froing to doctors, yet always having my illness dismissed.

I’d been 9 1/2st before my eating disorder, but was now 6st – very thin for my 4ft 11in height.

Increasingly weak, I passed out several times at work, before being referred to a therapist for CBT.

She took one look at me and said: “You don’t need me, you need an eating disorders clinic.”

Since then, I’ve spent 10 of the last 20 years as an in-patient in hospitals and specialist eating disorders clinics.

My mum Doreen, now 77, has cared for me without complaint for years, but I’m wracked with guilt.

No parent should have to watch their child slowly dying.

At my lowest point, in 2017, I was admitted to hospital weighing just 2st 12lb, with medics questioning how I was still alive.

With lots of support, I managed to get up to around 5st, but today I weigh just 3st 8lb.

Despite following doctor’s orders to consume 8,000 calories a day, I’m sick after every meal.

I can’t stand feeling full, and vomiting has become my body’s natural response to eating after years of me doing it deliberately.

Recent scans show I have the bone density of an 86 year old, scoliosis and six fractures in my spine due to severe osteoporosis, causing me to shrink to 4ft 6in.

I can walk only a few metres, there are sores on my hips where the bones protrude, and my heart has stopped five times, including once on holiday in Slovakia when I was 28, when Mum had to resuscitate me.

Though eating disorders are often secretive, I’ve shared my journey online and have given talks to medics so they can better help people like me.

None of it will change my outcome, but I want to help others choose a better path.

Recent NHS statistics reveal almost 10,000 children and young people in England started treatment for an eating disorder between 

April and December 2021, an increase of almost two-thirds since before the pandemic.

Anorexia has the highest mortality rates of all psychiatric disorders.

I look back at photos of myself as a teen beauty queen and just wish I could tell her to stop destroying her body, to seek the opinions of doctors and demand help until it was given.

That young woman would never have believed that, 20 years later, she’d be receiving end-of-life care and making peace with the fact she may not see her 40th birthday.”

Mum Doreen says: “Of all the catastrophic moments of Kim’s eating disorder, there’s one  that stands out – the day her GP dismissed her illness as nothing more than ‘a phase’.

“Watching my daughter wasting away is incredibly distressing. I’ve pleaded with her to live while she was in a coma, all the time asking: ‘What can I do to make this stop?’ 

“But it’s not simple.

“We’ve known for years that Kim’s kidneys, liver, bowel and heart are irreparably damaged and her life expectancy is short.

“I’ve come to terms with the fact I may outlive my child.

“She’s now too frail to join me on dog walks or days at our beach hut.

“Instead, we go to church together and love to watch old movies, such as Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. 

“But Kim never wallows. Her concern now is to help others with eating disorders and, for that, I’m so proud of her.” 

• Contact Beat, the UK’s eating disorder charity, on 0808 801 0677 or Beateatingdisorders.org.uk.