Anorexic Sister Karen

Karen, my next oldest sister that I live with, is anorexic and she’s close to death. Karen has been anorexic the majority of her adult life. She’s never maintained a normal weight, five foot four and always below 100 pounds. The neglect of any sustained attempt to be healthy has gotten the best of her.

Her symptoms are a result of long term anorexia. Karen is experiencing renal failure which means her kidneys are ceasing to work because of lack of food, energy. Physicians have documented for Karen’s benefit that dialysis for her is the next step, if she makes it to that. I know the rest of her organs aren’t faring any better. Her brand of anorexia makes her fear even drinking too much liquid, including water. She suffers the effect of constant dehydration.

Karen’s teeth are yellow and a few of her front teeth are missing. Several of her lower front teeth fell out recently. She won’t go to a dentist or discuss her lack of teeth unseen from looking at her face. I asked her if she saves them when they fall out. She told me she just throws them away.

For some reason, she can’t swallow normally either. Most of the time I’ve tried to detach from her and her identifying disease, for lack of anything else to do, but when I see her attempting to swallow incredibly small servings, it looks like her throat rejects it. She’ll gag for a split second and with tremendous effort, she forces it back down.

Karen’s drug of choice is food and even though she doesn’t eat the food, she spends more time grocery shopping than any other activity. She often has to take a break because she gets winded walking down the grocery isle. If she walks from the driveway to the front door with a bag of groceries, she needs to sit down right away because she’s short of breath. She’s lucky if she gets five minutes of sleep a night. She wears size zero, and even that is too big on her. She’s been thin enough to be sickly looking for as long as I can remember. Now she’s skeletal. Her eyes went from dark to deeply sunken in. She has light brown hair all over her body, something specific to anorexics.

The reason I live with her now is that I left the city for the suburbs to take care of my dad before he died. Karen couldn’t do it. My black haired dad, with crystal blue eyes, several months into the winter of his death, said, “Remember Sheila, Karen is one of us.” Naturally, there would be guilt on my part for leaving, for freeing myself from this tortuous witnessing of her death.

Three years after my mom died and right after my 84 year old father got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he moved from his home he shared with Karen to a smaller home nearby that Karen could manage. They raised nine kids and we all left the nest except for Karen.

All of my brothers and sisters, nieces, nephews and in laws came to transport or rid of beds, dressers, tables and everything that was in the house my dad owned for 64 years. But Karen wasn’t there. She was in her seventh or eighth lifetime inpatient treatment center for anorexics. Karen exhausted all of my parent’s resources, including money they didn’t have. My dad has been gone for three years and since then Karen’s been in an inpatient treatment center twice. Karen has an appointment with a doctor in a couple of weeks that has admitted her to the hospital a dozen times in the past, so she’s deliberately, again, losing more weight. From where on her body, I don’t know. Karen tells her family that we’re not allowed to talk about anything that has to do with her anorexia, but it is okay if we remind her sometimes to eat.

There’s a side of me that remembers my dad’s voice and my brother in law when he says, “Karen wasn’t dealt a good deck.” And fortunately there’s a side of me that’s nonjudgmental and has tried to remain detached; with my own earlier wild ways, perhaps that adaptation became necessary. I

If I hit my hand into a hard object by accident and said, “Ow,” Karen will remember the next morning and ask me if my hand is better. Once last year I had a cold, and she wouldn’t stop asking me if she could do anything for me, get me something. I work for a big company but from home and I usually don’t need to run to the store for anything because she’ll do it. Karen willingly will go get for me anything I need and she’s generous. Karen has temper tantrums but she’s always very sorry later, always. When Karen’s healthier, I can enjoy living with her.

Karen has one foot in her grave and I’m truly disappointed. I’m stressed too but more disappointed.

I don’t want to move but I do only because I don’t want to see her body eat itself. I don’t want there to be tension between us but there has to be because what I’m living with is stopping me from living.

I think my parents could have lived a lot longer if they didn’t feel responsible for breathing in her disease. My intuition tells me I’m right.