By Spencer Isberg, Rachel Applegate & Tristan Gauthier
Focus
Midland HS
1st Place Division 2, News Writing
Environmental, Health or Science
JUDGING CRITERIA
- Topic relevant to the school or students and covers health, science or environmental story that is informative
- Sharp, attention-getting lead grabs reader and arouses curiosity
- Shows thorough reporting skills through research and interviewing
- Effective use of facts/quotes from both primary and secondary sources
- Balanced, fair and sensitive presentation
- Sentences, paragraphs of varied length; written clearly, concisely and vividly
- Proper diction/grammar; use of third person
don’t care if I die from this,“This is what I want to do, I will keep losing weight until it’s the last thing I do. I don’t care if this is what kills me, it’s fine.’’ Senior Tegan Kareus remembers writing this in her journal after being diagnosed with anorexia her freshman year. Eating disorders affect between 7-10 million people in the United States. The two main types of eating disorders are Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa. Anorexia Nervosa, or “anorexia”, is described as excessive weight loss due to starvation. Bulimia Nervosa, or “bulimia”, is described as binging on food, to later make yourself throw up. Eating disorders are a nationwide problem affecting all places, including Midland High. Kareus and Junior Ella Jaster are both survivors of anorexia. Kareus found herself exercising excessively during track season, yet not eating enough to obtain a healthy body weight. Kareus found herself counting and monitoring every calorie she ate. “My thing was, I counted calories, and I had to stay within a certain amount of calories or I would freak out,” Kareus said. “So I would usually eat something for all three meals, but whether it was a carrot or something like that, I was just really strategic with it.” Kareus also created strict eating rules for herself to stay in a certain calorie range. She used these rules for every meal of the day. “I would never finish a plate of food, I would never get seconds, I would never eat the most out of anybody at the table,” Kareus said. “I had rules like that. I knew that I couldn’t skip meals because my mom would notice, so I just ate really, really tiny meals.” Like Kareus, Jaster also found herself starting to count calories, resulting in usually eating one meal a day, dinner. She ate dinner because it was the hardest meal to hide from her family. “I would throw food away at school and stuff things in my room,” Jaster said. “I would hide food in my room and I would hide it in different bags and throw it away later. Once you have that disorder in your head, it’s really easy to hide stuff.” Jaster started developing anorexia the summer going into her sixth grade year. At first it started by simply cutting out some unhealthy foods and staying in shape for both swimming and soccer. After really liking her body’s results, she started cutting out more and more things until she was almost cutting out food completely. Cutting out food almost led to life-threatening results. Jaster was hospitalized at the University of Michigan twice due to abnormal heart rhythms and electrolyte imbalances. The second time, she was admitted into the eating disorder clinic there. Jaster also had similar experiences to Kareus of writing self destructive words as a way to cope. Instead of a journal, she put her feelings in note form. “I used to write my mom notes that would start out nice and then I would tell her to stop forcing me to eat,” Jaster said.
Amy Jaster, Ella’s mother, described Ella’s notes, as a manipulation to allow her to eat less. “There would be notes where it would say, ‘I love you so much mom, but why do you have to feed me this much?’” Amy said. She knew she was wrong so she would apologize for it but then it was a manipulation for me to not give her as much food, and not pay attention to portion sizes.” Ella’s unhealthy habits continued at school. She found herself still trying to lose weight and burn as many calories as possible. “At school I used to leave the classroom and go to the farthest bathroom for extra steps, then I would work out like a maniac until I thought that I had burned enough calories,’’ Ella said. Kareus suffered many side effects, one being excessively low energy, making it hard for her to get through each day. “I cried every day,” Kareus said. “I know that. I remember it. I was so hungry that I would cry every single day. I remember just walking down the hallway and feeling like I was floating on a cloud because I didn’t have any energy left in me.” Ella felt many of the effects that come with anorexia, both physically and mentally. “It felt better in my head, but physically I felt terrible,” Ella said. “I was having headaches a lot and I was always freezing cold and shaking. I would bruise really easily, and my hair was falling out.” The physical effects can go from little to drastic over time. For females, it can affect menstruation cycles, as well as creating lab abnormalities. Malnourishment can cause severe problems with electrolytes, due to low potassium and sodium levels. Major undernourishment can also cause severe damage to the kidneys. Patients with bulimia can cause severe damage to the esophagus as well as the enamel on their teeth. This is due to the amount of acidic damage that comes from repeated vomiting. Dr. Dave Jordahl, a family physician and medical director at MidMichigan Health, said the effects of eating disorders are extremely severe as well as life threatening. “For an extreme example, they are extremely ill and are hospitalized,” Jordahl said. “Some, depending on what is happening, may need artificial nutrition, tube feedings. You also need to correct the immediate problems, like the electrolyte problems.” Behavioral Health Therapist Andrew Gardner-Northrop, works with a variety of people at Mid Michigan Health, he said that eating disorders can start from a variety of things. “Psychologically, if you are placing your body under physical stress, than that can create an emotional stress,” Gardner-Northrop said. Gardner-Northrop said that eating disorders can stem from other mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression. They’re sometimes used as a coping mechanism to deal with the apparent issues. “How I cope isn’t going to be the same as how you cope,” Gardner-Northrop said. “We want to figure out what really works for you, so we often times look at mindfulness or relaxation skills. If you had a stressful day at school or at work, how do you cope with that? Is it when you are driving home? Do you crank the radio to help separate you from your situation? Or do you need to drive home in complete silence and have the windows completely down or completely up? But a coping skill can be a coping skill whether it be a good one or a bad one.” Bad coping skills, however, can affect more than just one’s personal life– they can affect people socially. With the immense effect that media can have on our lives, it can be hard for people with eating disorders to increase confidence and find social balance. “We know that socialization happens all the time, and there’s different forms of socialization,” Gardner-Northrop said. “With TV or media, it does play a factor in that socialization. So if we are watching things that are constantly giving negative annotations, that’s probably what we are going to know and relate most with the negative side to it.” Jordahl said that eating disorders are so prevalent because of the way society portrays body image, and that the media creates pressure to look a certain way. “We live in a society that has a social norm of what we’re supposed to look like, and that’s often times unrealistic,” Jordahl said. Tammy Burgeon, Kareus’s mother, didn’t notice what was going on until the summer after her freshman year. Kareus was on vacation with a friend and posted a picture while she was there. Burgeon then realized there was a problem due to how small Kareus looked in the picture. “It was really weird, she was on vacation in Yellowstone, and I saw a picture that she posted on either Facebook or Instagram, and I couldn’t believe it,” Burgeon said. “I couldn’t believe how tiny she looked. I was just really scared. I pretty much knew right away what was going on.” Burgeon said she wishes she could have caught it sooner and noticed the signs. At times she blamed herself for what happened to her daughter. “As a parent, you innately feel responsible, so it was very hard for me,” Burgeon said. “I wish that I’d caught it sooner, but I didn’t. That was the most challenging thing, when I took responsibility for the problem.” Amy said Ella’s disorder was difficult to talk about, not because she was embarrassed of her daughter, but embarrassed by herself. “I felt guilty that I didn’t know better, that I didn’t see it, that I couldn’t fix it,” Amy said.” I feel in my heart of hearts I should’ve of known. That is a guilt that I’ll never be able to take back, that is something that I will feel forever guilty about.” Amy said she learned one skill in particular from the University of Michigan hospital to help her daughter. “The one thing that really helped me to help Ella was to separate Ella the person, from Ella the disorder,“ Amy said. ”I was able to identify with her that it wasn’t Ella the person it was her disorder that was causing this.” Despite the hardships of the disorder, Burgeon said that it has brought her and her daughter closer together. They go on walks every Sunday not just in mother- daughter terms, but also as friends. “A person is a person, it’s just a part of them,” Gardner-Northrop said. “It’s not an eating disorder patient, it’s just a person who has symptoms of an eating disorder.”