An Ode to My Mom for Mother’s Day
Mike Kraft is a former sports journalist and member of The Emilee Connection: Adult Eating Disorder Support Group. He is intelligent, witty, kind, and determined. Mike’s talents and attributes shine through and enlightens us as he openly shares reflections about his journey with Anorexia.
Mike can be reached at: mkraft418@gmail.com
In May, we celebrate all the wonderful moms out there. For some of us, every day should be Mother’s Day with how monumental their love and support for us have been since the day we were born. On this day, we shower them in love in many different ways: breakfast in bed, flowers and chocolates, a walk in the park, handmade or personalized gifts, and many hugs. Sometimes it can be a difficult task to find the proper way to fully encapsulate just how much a mother means to a son or daughter. My brother and I do some of the staples: flowers, chocolates, and gourmet chocolate-covered strawberries, and maybe attend a baseball game if the weather permits. But this year I wanted to do something a little bit unique. I want to give her the public recognition that she deserves but would never ask for or want (sorry in advance, mom). My mom is what I would call a silent hero. Her actions won’t ever make headlines or the evening news, but she can be – and should be – credited with my recovery successes. Her belief in me never wavered, even when I gave her every reason on the planet to give up on me. My mom will say that she’s not perfect, but she is perfect to me.
My mom is the only person that can say she’s loved me nine months before I was even born. Friendships and relationships have come and gone, but my mom has always been by my side, through good times and the bad. My mom has certainly been tested. There is no book on parenthood that could have prepared her for all that she would have to endure with me, but she always knew exactly what to do.
My eating disorder was not my first health scare. My dictionary-sized medical chart predates my current recovery efforts. It started back when I was 6 or 7 and on my mother’s birthday of all days. That morning, I woke up with little red dots on my legs. They didn’t hurt and they didn’t itch, so we ignored them at the time, thinking they might just be an allergic reaction or a minor rash. But by the end of the day, those tiny red dots had grown 10x in size and were a shade of purple and red. On top of that, my joints had stiffened, leaving me unable to walk. My mom came home early from work and rushed me to the emergency room around 9 p.m. that night. We were there well into the early morning hours. It was where I started getting familiar with needles and IVs. I was discharged a few hours later, but a follow-up appointment with my doctor the next day led to me being admitted to the hospital.
It wouldn’t be the last time that summer I was hospitalized. But there was always a constant: my mom was always there. Whether it was her bringing me to the hospital or her sitting by my bedside, she always was there, comforting me through all the pain. I was in physical pain, and I made it known. She was in emotional pain but hid the fear to keep me calm. As a young kid, I never knew the severity of my condition. No one that young ever thinks they are going to die from an illness, but there was that chance. It was something my mom knew, but I could never pick up on it. Even when she couldn’t protect me, she somehow always found a way.
Henoch-Schonlein purpura. That was the diagnosis. A rare disorder causing inflammation and bleeding in the small blood vessels. It’s still considered rare with fewer than 200,000 cases each year in the United States, but it was even rarer when I was younger, so rare that many of the medical team working on my case had only read about in medical journals. They had never actually seen it in person.
I experienced every possible side effect: red and purple spots on my legs, stiff joints, kidney failure, swollen and knotted intestines, nerve pain and skin ulcerations. I was hospitalized three times and was being seen by both a nephrologist and members of the burn unit on top of the countless number of doctors. Even though I don’t remember many specific details of my battle with the illness, I will physically wear its scars for the rest of my life. Thankfully, my kidneys made a full recovery and didn’t require lifelong dialysis. My intestines unknotted and the pain went away. The stiffness in my joints subsided and I regained the ability to walk, although my flexibility is subpar to this date. The red and purple dots dissipated, and I was able to start school on time in September. But the ulcerations are still present, although nearly invisible to the untrained eye. I have ulcerations on both of my arms and on my one heel. They are small but tell a big story.
Those scars are forever imprinted on me, but what else is imprinted on me from that time is the sacrifices my mom made for me. I still remember waking up from a nap one afternoon while at home recovering and calling out for my mom. She wasn’t home. She had to return to work because she had exhausted all of her paid time off for the year to stay with me each day while I was in the hospital. But even though she was at work, it didn’t mean she didn’t have time to talk to me when I would call her at work. Even if she couldn’t be there physically, hearing her voice over the phone was enough to calm me.
That ordeal ended up being just the appetizer to what was coming down the road. It would serve as yet another reminder as to just how fortunate I was to have the mom that I have. I received about a seven-year grace period between the end of my Henoch-Schonlein purpura illness and the beginning of my eating disorder.
My mom knew something was wrong well before any doctor. It started when I was 14 and my mom knew right away. She may not have known exactly what was wrong, but she knew something was different. I slowly began exercising more and was no longer going for seconds at dinner or eating foods that I had always enjoyed. I started losing weight, which was a red flag for my mom as I was still growing and was not someone who needed to lose weight. But her concerns were met with a shrug, both from me and my doctor at the time. It was dismissed as either stress from school or simply a phase I would grow out of. It wasn’t until I went to the ER for an intestinal blockage that my doctor finally referred me to a specialist. I had gone the entire day without eating. For that summer, I had a rule that I wasn’t allowed to eat a single bite of food before 3 p.m. I would also do two hours of cardio at the gym in the morning, all on an empty stomach. It sounded normal to me at the time but now feels psychotic thinking back). Finally, at dinner, I indulged in a Wegman’s sub and a bag of Chex Mix. But my intestines had shriveled from the lack of food all day and couldn’t push the food along in my system and got wedged as a result.
I started seeing a specialist after that, but it was still a couple years before any serious action was taken. But my mom did everything she could to help me. Just like most people, my mom didn’t have the slightest knowledge of eating disorders in the beginning. But to her credit, she learned. She read articles, personal accounts, and books. She attended seminars and support groups. She spoke with specialists. She put in the work. That made it easier for me to trust her as an ally and not dismiss her as an enemy when it came to recovery. I could trust that she wanted what was best for both of us, not just her.
Recovery is never linear. There are bumps in the road and inevitable relapses. It happened to me on multiple occasions, but my mom was always there to lend a helping hand. She never gave up on me, even when I gave up on myself. She convinced me to go away to treatment for the first time even when I was thoroughly against it. But her words penetrated what I thought was an impenetrable shield put up by my eating disorder. Her words were always able to bypass its defenses. Everyone else’s words died on impact. They still do.
Even when I was away at treatment, my mom was right there. When I was in the hospital, my mom spent just as much time at my bedside as she would at home. Visiting me became her job to the point where she didn’t really get much accomplished at home when I was in the hospital. Thankfully she got lucky with the parking garage, and she rarely ever had to pay for parking. Had it not been for COVID restrictions limiting me to one visitor per day, she would have been up every day, but I also wanted to see my dad, so they had to take turns visiting. My mom made the visitations warm and comforting. We’d rarely even talk about anything related to treatment. Instead, we’d watch television, play board games she brought from home and take a stroll around the hospital. When I went away to treatment downstate – more than five hours away – my parents came to visit every weekend. I was there for nine weeks.
I’ve always felt safe talking about my disease with my mom. Even when I said things that sounded crazy, she tried to understand and sympathize instead of judge. She never thought I was hopeless. She never thought I was a lost cause. She never thought I was a burden.
My mom was always willing to do everything and sacrifice anything for me. She would meal plan, meal prep, drive me to all of my appointments (none of which are closer than a 20-minute drive) and speak with my therapist and dietician. The amount of time she has spent in a waiting room could be counted in weeks if not months. Even though she took control of my nutrition early in the recovery process, she still remembered that there was a human being involved. She paid attention to the types of food she was making for me and emphasized balance. She wasn’t going to make a meal plan for me that she herself wouldn’t eat. It made meal times much less stressful because it was foods I was already eating, just now in larger quantities.
My mom gave up a lot of her livelihood to make sure I would succeed. For the longest time, she put my needs in front of hers. She wouldn’t make time for herself to do something fun or enjoyable because she wanted to make sure she could be home to ensure that we were adhering to the meal plan. Therefore, she wouldn’t make plans with friends to go out for a meal and catch up or enroll in a class or activity she was interested in. I’ve been happy to see my mom once again get to live her life now that I am further along in my recovery. She’s been able to hang out with friends and family and do activities she’s interested in without having to worry about watching the clock.
She also would protect me from the unsolicited questioning and concerns from others. We tend to host family events, especially around the holidays, but the unhealthier I became, the more my mom was less likely to have family over. She knew I was uncomfortable with my appearance and didn’t want to add to the discomfort, so therefore the number of family gatherings we had over the years dwindled. And when we would host, she made sure to shield me from the questions. I felt bad, as she must have had to answer the same three questions from any visitor we would have over. It exhausted her physically and mentally, but she never made me feel guilty about it. I’m sure it was taxing on her, having to sometimes stretch the truth to calm any unease from those concerned about me. It’s nice knowing she can tell the truth now and feel good about it.
My mom never tried to shape me to fit a specific personality. She let me discover who I was and allowed me to forge my own identity. She never forced me to do anything or forbid me from doing anything (within reason of course). My mom wasn’t someone who put the fear of God in me if I ever participated in the types of things that dumb teenagers did from time to time. All she cared about was me being smart and safe and to not put myself or anyone else in danger.
She used the same type of parenting when it came to my eating disorder. She wasn’t going to force recovery on me because she knew I was the one that had to be motivated to change if I was ever going to break free of my disorder. She couldn’t do it for me even though she wished she could. My mom never sought medical guardianship of me even when I was at my sickest and would have been able to get a judge to grant it. Again, she knew forcing me to get better would just make everything worse. When I started getting extremely sick and things were looking grim, we had an honest conversation about looking for hospice care. Even though it wasn’t what she wanted for me, she understood how exhausted I was from years of battling this disease and just how much it took out of me. She didn’t want me to die, but she gave me permission. If it was the one thing that would make me happy and free me from my pain, she would support my wishes even if it would devastate her for the rest of her life. That might have been all I needed to hear to make that difficult choice to get help. Once I was given the permission to die, I no longer felt like that was the right path to go down. So, I didn’t and now I’m here writing this as a result. Sometimes permission is all you need to not do something. It’s much easier to give up on something when no one shows you any type of support or doesn’t seem to care. It’s hard to give up when the people you care about the most want you to keep going.
My mom has always been my eating disorder’s kryptonite. My eating disorder has told me for over a decade that no one cares about me and that no one would care if I died tomorrow. I would tell my mom that she would be shocked by how few people would attend my funeral if I died because nobody cared about me. But my mom was always the proof that dispelled my false belief. She always cared about me. Her support never wavered. She saved me.
But our relationship is far more than just her helping me when I was sick. We also have a lot of better memories together. She went to all of my baseball and basketball games growing up. We have a daily tradition of watching Jeopardy and struggling to get more than 10 percent of the questions right. We go to movies and munch away at theater popcorn. When I was in grade school, she’d help construct my shoebox dioramas and attend my musical concerts when I played percussion. When I was younger, she would read to my brother and I every night, butchering her way through all the names in Harry Potter. All of my best memories involve her.
I’m happy that my mom has been able to resume her life without the constant worry of her youngest son’s health. Obviously, she’ll always worry about me, but the normal amount of worry that every mother has toward their children. But now she has more time to enjoy her hobbies. She can spend time in the yard planting fresh flowers and watching the many varieties of birds that visit. She can get comfy on the sofa and chip away at her backlog of books. Whatever she chooses to do in her free time can now be done in peace knowing that her son is on the fast track to a healthy and happy life.
No one gets to choose their mother, but if we did, I’d choose the mom I was gifted every day for the rest of my life. Happy Mother’s Day, mom! I love you!
Mike Kraft