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This is Katya when she was just 9 years old. Seeing her here, you wouldn’t know that just 4 years later at 13 she would develop an eating disorder that would change the course of her life forever.
When she began watching the ‘lockdown glow-up’ trends on social media in 2020, she thought people might like her more if she looked like the girls she was seeing online.
It started by restricting her food and exercising more, until her mum noticed her mood change and took Katya to a paediatrician. That’s when they received the diagnosis. Anorexia Nervosa.
Katya had regular appointments with the paediatrician, and they eventually tried family therapy, which led to Katya masking her symptoms because she felt like she was burdening her family.
Soon after that, she had her first stay in hospital. But that was just the beginning…
Katya then went through the constant cycle of recovery and relapse. Over and over again. And she’s not the only one.
In Katya’s experience, hospitals often use a ‘one size fits all’ approach to treat eating disorders, and while this works for some people, most people need a personalised treatment plan.
“The environment in hospital was competitive,” says Katya, “I felt like I wasn’t ‘sick enough’ and vowed to myself to be the sickest girl in the ward.”
That’s when her body began to shut down.
She struggled to go to school because her knees were in pain, and she was tired all the time.
It’s important to know the type of person Katya was. During her many stays in hospital, when she needed support and compassion for herself, she was crocheting blankets, hats, and boots for newborn babies and her family and friends. She had dreams of becoming a doctor and helping make a difference to even more people.
While Katya has recovered from her eating disorder now, she still has heart problems that might stay with her for life. “There’s people who were sick for a lot longer than I was, but people don’t realise the damage that it does to your body,” she says.
But Katya’s story doesn’t end there. During her many stays in hospital, she made friends with Liv, another patient relapsing from her own eating disorder. Katya describes it as a revolving door of patients.
Liv and Katya were fast friends and bonded over their love of animals and getting creative with arts and crafts.
But Katya saw Liv’s spark slowly fade. “Each time I was readmitted to hospital, I would see Liv, and each time, she would be just a little bit less herself than when I had previously seen her,” says Katya, “The last time I saw her, she was just a shell of herself.”
The hospital system didn’t work for Liv. She needed a personalised treatment plan, like that offered at Wandi Nerida, Butterfly’s residential treatment facility in Queensland. The problem is government funding doesn’t cover all the costs.
“I was giving up on my dreams for an illness that was trying to kill me, because that’s its goal.” – Katya.
This is why Katya is on a mission. Because we need to stop the revolving door of patients, and we can do this by helping those in need access personalised treatment at Wandi Nerida.
Some of the things that you could be helping to fund is therapy programs at Wandi. We offer horses for equine assisted therapy, movement, arts, music, drama, and nature therapy, as well as individual, group, and family therapy. You could also be funding the facility itself such as maintenance and cleaning, participant beds and meals, outings, and more.
What do you think? Will you join Katya’s mission?
Katya is currently finishing her HSC exams and hopes to become a doctor one day to help others the way they helped her. Please wish her luck by writing a kind message below, and we’ll share it with her.
Wish Katya luck with her HSC exams!
