This is a spontaneous blog following something that happened today.

Earlier this morning I walked into the dementia unit at the care home I work in and walked into the very GP who refused to acknowledge that I had anorexia 4-5 years ago. The same GP who every few weeks forced me onto the scales, often as I wept and begged not to, before declaring I was “still fine” because my BMI wasn’t quite low enough.

The same man who showed no concern when I discussed in depth my obsession with calories, my obsessive pacing as a means to lose weight, and my avoidance of nearly every meal. The same man who ignored my mother’s pleas to help me as she watched her youngest child waste away.

As you can imagine, this encounter left me feeling a range of overwhelming emotions. I have no doubt that this doctor is a kind man, who wants to help his patients and cares for his loved ones, but in my story, he is a villain.

I immediately felt an overwhelming anger, one I never experienced during our time extrallenged in a patient-doctor relationship, and appreciate now. I wanted to scream at him, to demand answers there and then. To tell him how stupid he had been in ignoring my symptoms and to make him realise he had caused me years of unnecessary suffering and potentially risked my life.

I also felt a deep sense of shame. A shame at my recovery. I suddenly wanted to be sicker than I was before. So I could show him how wrong he was to fail in his duty of care. To blame him for my ever decreasing weight and the physical complications accompanying it. I felt my current weight-restored body would somehow validate his choices all those years back. I worried he’d think “see, she’s fine now. There was nothing wrong. I told her she was fine.” He was unable to see the years of therapy and continuing battles I have with weight and food, and I wished I have the physical appearance to demonstrate this.

The reality is more than likely that my old GP didn’t even remember me. I moved away to return to university and now have a different GP at his practice, my hometown medical centre. But that stings too. For me, he is a significant part of my struggle with mental illness and to consider that to him I was no more than another young adult experiencing mental illness sits uneasy.

So this evening I sit here, still feeling an underlying anger, and I keep reminding myself it’s okay that mine and his realities are different. I keep reminding myself that I know, wholeheartedly, that what he did was wrong.

Lorna

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