Stephanie Rodas, 28, has been anorexic for 16 years. She used to be obese and often bullied at school at 13. She began to eat less, and her weight dropped to as low as 55 lbs at one stage when she looked more like a ‘walking skeleton’.
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“I felt I looked very ugly when I was 13,” said Rodas. “I was over-weight, and my classmates nicknamed me ‘fattie’. Everyone would throw food at me in the canteen.”
When she was 17, her family took her to a hospital in New Jersey for treatment, but her condition continued to deteriorate. She was never cured, but managed to obtain a discharge from the hospital by learning a few ‘tricks’ from fellow patients by meeting food intake requirements. Subsequently, her condition turned from bad to worse, and the many years of treatment have failed to produce positive results.
In February, she became unconscious for three days after taking painkillers and was close to death.
She recently appeared on ‘The Doctors’, an American TV show, where she appealed for treatments that could cure her ailment. “There must be a cure somewhere,” she said. “I have never felt I could make it, and I don’t know if I could overcome this hurdle.”
She then underwent a number of tests, including blood test and ultrasound, in order to ascertain the damage anorexia had done to her body, before doctors could decide on the treatment.
