imustnotcry
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(25/3/04 2:09 pm)
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Dying Young - Death from Bulimia
Dying Young
Andrea Smeltzer was a vibrant and promising young woman, an exemplary 'student with a passion for life that made an impression on everyone she knew. But in June, the 19-year-old became a sobering statistic. A Napa resident for most of her life, Andrea spent a year living abroad in Spain and was fluent in the language by the time she graduated from Vintage High School in 1997. At the prestigious Pitzer College, where she was an active presence on campus, she managed to complete her undergraduate degree in international studies by the end of her sophomore year. After college, she hoped to use her degree to work with humanitarian agencies like Amnesty International. "She experienced more in life than many people do. But I used to say to her, 'Please slow down, you'll have nothing left at 30. It'll all be done,'" recalled her mother, Doris Smeltzer. "Maybe she knew." On June 16, after a thirteen-month struggle with bulimia, Andrea died in her sleep when an electrolyte imbalance caused her heart to fail.
The public's perception of eating disorders - once thought to be the domain of adolescent girls and supermodels - is changing, thanks to recent high-profile Incidents like the 1997 death of the San Francisco ballerina whose heart failure was linked with an eating disorder, and Princess Diana's often publicized struggle with bulimia.
For those who knew her, Andrea's death put yet another new face on the disease: that of a young, successful college woman with everything to live for.
'When you are small there is no protection from shame, and now that you are older your attempts to keep the unsafe out cost you more then you can imagine. We need to breath in the direction of danger and to sing. We must not only be wounded - for surely all of us are that, but be willing to suffer the terrifying healing with its stations of humiliation, shame, endurance and grief'
- Sark, Succulent Wild Woman, 1997. |
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