'It took a heart attack' by Emma Lee
It took a heart attack
I suffered a heart attack on New Year’s Eve.
A thousand laxatives will do that to you.
When I was eight, I over-ate. At sixteen
I tried thyroid pills, amphetamine slimming tablets
and over-exercising. The doctor referred me
and the psychologist asked if I was gay.
I was offered anti-depressants instead.
But I'm not depressed. Got skewed vision.
Everyone said "We didn’t know how bad it was.”
I wish they'd said something sooner.
Comments
Author: This poem was based on a story I heard from a friend about someone they once knew. A young man knew he was in trouble but couldn't see a way out. His GP referred him to a counselor who assumed that a young man interested in the way he looked must be gay, causing offense and breaching the trust of the person who needed help. It's a source of concern that the man didn't understand that anti-depressants aren't just used to treat depression but can be useful in treating eating disorders too - this also suggests a failure of communication on the part of medical services. It makes it harder to ask for help if your initial attempts are met with dismissal and false assumptions. Even well-intentioned but misguided help can do more harm than good. Once the man decided he was going to talk to family and friends about what he'd been through, he was shocked to discover he'd hadn't been as good at hiding it as he thought he had been. However, his friends and family hadn't known how to help so didn't discuss it with him. This meant that when he had asked for help and felt misunderstood and unsupported, his friends and family inadvertently reinforced those feelings. It’s easy to say “Why didn’t the sufferer simply ask for help?” but that assumes that the right help is freely available once asked for.
Our readers who ranked the poems:
- wow – made me feel such an empathy for the writer, especially the last line.
- emphasise the importance of people recognising the danger of the disorder[...] could apply to any age group.
- quite brief but complex in composition and powerful in conveying the thoughts of the author within the context of the subject.
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