It seemed that boys didn't get eating disorders,
so when my son suddenly started losing weight rapidly,
it was very confusing.
So, the first time we went to the GP,
the GP had never met him because he was such a healthy boy
and so basically just said "oh don't mummies fuss, you know, you look like a really fit, healthy young man to me."
So before, before he developed anorexia,
he was the eldest of six kids, or five at the time,
he was really sporty, he was precise, slightly perfectionist,
Good at maths, passion for sport and running.
So if you'd met him with his mates at school,
you would have said he was the least likely boy to ever have a mental health issue,
and then, so it was such a shock, not just to us.
It was a shock to the school, it was a shock to all the his friends, their families.
The families were bizarrely worried that maybe he had some infectious disease that he might give to their sons.
And at that time he was still eating plenty
but what we didn't know was that he was doing all this extra exercise
and that was leading to this weight loss.
Now, several weeks after that, the GP did start to take it seriously because he was becoming very unwell,
with this rapid weight loss, so a kilo a week for 12 weeks was his progression.
But then thought it was something physical,
so he was tested for anything to do with the gut,
so you know, a blockage, Crohn's disease, IBS,
then all the cancers he was tested for, and of course, it was such a relief because all of these tests came back negative
but we were like well, but what is wrong with him?
So you know, we always say as mums, don't you have the benefit of hindsight.
So with hindsight maybe we would have done things a little bit differently
but because he's had this growth spurt and he was really, really determined that he was going to be really fit and healthy,
he wanted to be football captain the following year, he wanted to win the school cross country run.
So the first thing that happened was,
he persuaded me that he would have an exercise bike in his bedroom.
And we thought fine, well you know, great,
He's got his tv, so he can be doing his exercise watching his tv.
Or maybe watching something for his studies
or you know, sometimes he would do that.
And so we were aware that he was going on the exercise bike,
quite a lot, but we didn't think that that was a problem.
But he did start to lose weight.
Where we started to realise it had become a problem
was when it was becoming so repetitive and so compulsive.
So, as well as the exercise bike and as well as going to swim training at school,
so he was a swimmer as well.
So as well as going to swim training and as well as going for extra long runs,
he would be constantly moving.
So he would wake up in the morning and he would do about five, well probably exactly 500 press-ups,
500 sit-ups and then he'd come down the stairs and,
trying not to let us see, but obviously we'd see him doing something,
he'd do 500 pull-ups on the stairs
and that would be before breakfast.
So as his illness progressed,
we went from being a really kind of happy, busy, passionate family,
you know about life, so every weekend was full of lots of trips out and his football
and parties and all that sort of thing
and very quickly we became very isolated and very insular, as the illness progressed.
Well to start with as I say, he was eating exactly the same as all of his mates so it wasn't a problem.
So it was a curiosity that he was losing weight,
and then of course people at school started to notice, his friends started to notice,
the wider family started to notice.
My lovely mum would always say the wrong thing and do the wrong thing
because of the generational stuff.
So yeah, very quickly it became apparent that he was really, really unwell.
One of the things I did was I rang the school to say
'I'm really worried about Joe, have you noticed anything?'
and at that time they said yes he's become the talk of the staff room.
And I just wish they'd rung me earlier.
I wish they'd, as soon as they were worried, that they would have thought,
let's ring the parents and see what they're noticing.
But anyway once we had had that conversation we could then kind of work together
but the force of the eating disorder was so powerful then,
that we weren't able to arrest it.
And then what we didn't know was he'd stopped eating lunch at school.
So that's often a warning sign for young people but
but schools are busy places.
You know schools don't always notice if someone has stopped eating lunch at school.
And then when he would come home he would often say I'm bored
and that would be the indication.
So to start with we thought he just found us boring because he was a teenager and he's our eldest,
so maybe that's what teenagers do but he would come home and say I'm bored and disappear to his bedroom
and that's when we would start to hear the bumping and the crashing
where he was doing not only the pull-ups and the sit-ups and the press-ups,
he was doing star jumps and burpees and all of these other things as well.
And it was relentless, so then he would come downstairs,
looking quite red in the face.
He might eat
a quarter of a fish finger, five peas and three chips and then go back up and start again.
So that was towards the, the end of the pre-diagnosis phase I guess.
But then when he got diagnosed he was admitted to hospital very quickly because he was so poorly.
When somebody's been starved,
their metabolism slows down, like going on a crash diet
but then when they start eating again,
it takes so much energy to rebuild all of that tissue in your body,
so when he went back to school and started playing football,
he needed to eat about four and a half thousand calories a day
and that was a real challenge and that went on for about probably nine months,
that he needed to eat so much more.
Now he's still very active, he's very sporty, he works at a football club in London.
He does a lot, he plays football, does a lot of running, cycling that sort of thing,
and he he now responds to his appetite.
So he's completely got that appetite back
and he probably eats more than most other people because he's so active
but it's just intuitive now.