Fundraiser to Save Local Teen from Eating Disorders

Her muscles clenched up.
She couldn’t use them.  The
paralysis moved to her face, her mouth.
She couldn’t move, she couldn’t talk.
It hurt so much!

This was part of Tacoma teen Sarah Feiss’ (an alias; all
other info and images are accurate) most recent Sunday.  She didn’t regain use of her muscles until she
was fed broth and had her muscles rubbed down.
Labs the next day showed that the
potassium levels in her bloodstream had dropped so low that her muscles had literally
frozen up, and she was at risk for heart attack.  They also showed kidneys that were at risk of
shutting down due to dehydration.  She
was immediately hospitalized.

What was causing all of this?  Sarah suffers from bulimia, as well as
symptoms of anorexia.  Eating Disorders
are often dismissed as a teenage girl problem, nothing to be taken seriously.  But Eating Disorders have the highest
mortality rates of any psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia and
bipolar disorder.  They kill via heart
and vital organ failure due to malnutrition, as well as through extremely high
suicide rates.   (ANAD.org, http://www.anad.org/get-information/about-eating-disorders/eating-disord...)
By throwing up any and all food she’d eaten day after day, month after month,
Sarah had depleted her body of vital electrolytes.   Through the constant bingeing and purging that
characterize bulimia, Sarah had been destroying her body.

As with sufferers of other psychiatric disorders, like depression
or OCD, Sarah has little control over her mental-illness-related actions: she can recognize the harm she is doing to
her body by purging, yet the anxiety she feels if she doesn’t purge is so
overwhelmingly painful that it is as if she doesn’t have a choice.  It is because of this dynamic that sufferers
of Eating Disorders desperately need intensive treatment, usually at a
specialized facility for several weeks or months at a time.

Unfortunately, that treatment is often very expensive.  In Sarah’s case, it will cost her parents
$3600 above and beyond what their military health insurance will cover, $3600 that
they don’t have.  Her friends and family
have organized a fundraiser through the crowdfunding website indiegogo.com in
order to raise the funds needed to send Sarah to a treatment center.  Anyone interested in donating can visit the
site, http://igg.me/at/eating-disorders-kill-please-save-sarah/x/2431572.
All we ask for is $30; if 130 people
donate $30, we will raise the money needed to get Sarah to treatment.   

Sarah is loving and kind, brilliant and curious, passionate,
and fun-loving.  She is a local girl, 19
years old.  She is dearly loved by her
friends and family.  We would be so
grateful for any and all support!