I’m a Unicorn! 🦄 ✅

I’m long overdue for a bigger/better/longer/still vagueish update about what’s been happening here at the hospital (which is now basically my second home), but, as is often the case, laziness has prevailed over my genuinely good intentions. I’ve thus managed to knit most of a blanket and play more games of online Boggle than I dare admit while contemplating—OK, procrastinating from—writing a simple blog post.

Yesterday morning, however, my dietitian called me a unicorn. I took this as a sign from the universe (in case you’re wondering, I started believing in signs from the universe when I started believing in unicorns, which happened to be when I was called one) that I should shake myself out of my stupor. Would a unicorn avoid producing a long and boring blog entry? I think not.

So, down to business. What’s been happening? A whole lot and very little. Most pertinently, for the past three weeks, ending on Wednesday, I put up with a care plan that I found almost intolerable (the fact that I tolerated it meant, I guess, that it was tolerable, despite my frequently insisting the opposite) and came out the other side with information that has opened doors to what should finally allow me to make real, tangible, and faster progress.

It’s been challenging all along to figure out what I require to gain weight. My dietitian explained yesterday that no one really knows how the two factors of my longstanding eating disorder, which can boost one’s metabolism during the weight-restoration process, and my intractable seizures interact. What we’ve figured out, though, is that I need more energy to gain weight than my dietitian has ever given any of her patients. I am, as she said, and as I previously mentioned that she said, a “unicorn.” A unicorn who eats large meals and snacks and also drinks seventeen Ketocal supplements a day.

I’m a little frustrated because this is what I’ve been suggesting for quite some time—that my body needs even more energy than the astronomical amount we were already giving it—and as you might understand, vocalizing that hasn’t been easy for someone recovering from anorexia nervosa. Of course, I’m also frustrated because now that they’ve discovered that I’m a Ketocal-guzzling unicorn, I’m faced with a task, albeit one I signed up for, that’s as intimidating as it is necessary.

All I can do is take it one day and one flick of my sparkly purple mane at a time.