I love being a mom.

So my daughter is very shy, very quiet, extremely smart.

She plays tennis.

She loves to read.

She's very artistic.

I would say one of our one of the biggest challenges of being a mom is knowing that line of I want them to feel comfortable coming to me and talking to me about, you know, things, issues they may be having, but drawing that line that I'm also not their friend.

I'm the mom that does phone checks.

I do phone checks randomly.

I picked up her phone one night to do a phone check and I saw a search in her safari that said, why am I not losing weight when I don't eat?

So that sparked a conversation, a very hard conversation that we had to have with her.

Oftentimes when I'm meeting with someone who's suffering from an eating disorder, I will see changes in their mood, changes in their energy level.

Their brain has changed because they don't have the right type of nutrition.

So some warning signs can be seeing changes in overall behavior, increased irritability, particularly around mealtime or isolation.

When I found that search, then I started putting the pieces together that she was having headaches because she wasn't eating.

Then I realized, Well, she hasn't been honest with me about when she's eating and when she's not eating.

It broke my heart because I didn't know that she felt that way about herself.

She started picking the skin off of her leg, the top of her leg.

It's heartbreaking to think that your child feels like they have to physically hurt themselves, you know to live.

In the United States.

Roughly, close to about 30 million people will suffer from an eating disorder in their lifetime.

When we talk about teen agers, the percentage is ro.. of all teenagers will struggle with an eating disorder, with about 13% of them struggling by the age of 20.

So pretty prevalent in our society.

And I think that number is actually an underestimation because these things are so good at hiding.

There may be people struggling that we just don't even know about.

She was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa, restrictive when we met for the first time with the physician.

They said that she was not medically stable enough to continue to get treatment through them online.

And they admitted her that day into Prisma PICU in Columbia.

So when they came to the hospital and were stabilized, that's when we started our conversations and we continued our conversations completely through telemedicine visits, which has been a pretty amazing experience.

They they have now have access to the specialty level of care to take care of their eating disorder without having to travel miles and hours to get it.

Having Dr. Guyton on board was a game changer for us.

We met with him, followed up with him virtually once she was discharged.

And it was amazing to be able to have him there for support and guidance on what to do, since he is very knowledgeable and there's not really that many options here in this area because being able to travel, you know, is about a three hour drive.

So it was it was amazing to be able to have him.

And we're very, very grateful.

I always tell patients, if you can make it through the first 24 hours, you're going to be okay.

The first 24 hours, people are going to ask you a lot of..

They want to know you so that we can treat you as a person, not as a eating disord..

If you can make it through the first 24 hours, please stick with me.

Every day from here forward is going to get easier and easier as the symptoms that bro.. get lesser and lesser and the symptoms of health increase.

Nutritional rehabilitation is a cornerstone of eating disorder, treatment and recovery.

So I feel an important component to that is nutrition education.

So we want to have proteins, carbohydrates, fats and then dairy, fruits and vegetables.

So when you have a patient who can work with a meal plan that has an adequate macronutrients, which are the proteins, fats and carbohydrates, they are essentially getting all their micronutrients like calcium and vitamin D and vitamin A.

So in general, that's where I like to start creating a balanced plan that incorporates all the foods in each group.

So each week we had an appointment with each person.

My daughter had an appointment with a therapist and her peer mentor weekly.

I participated in part of her therapy, and then I would step out and she would meet with her by herself.

I will say it was very, very helpful to have all of them on board because they all brought a different piece of knowledge to the table.

The dietician especially, you know, offering different things to do to get more calories in different you know, add butter to stuff at adding benacalorie just different things like that that I didn't know about.

So I think it was each piece was in each person was important in their own way.

I think it's great when they have a good team together with a medical provider as a therapist and dietician, to all work together to help that patient get to the other side of the disease.

It is so wonderful to see when people can put all that hard work into that and come out on the other side and live a beautiful life.

She just had an epiphany one day, is what I would call it.

She came in my room from school and she said, I've just decided that I'm going to eat what I want to eat when I want to eat it.

And I'm not going to care what people think.

So she was able to find her strength.

And I will say my patients who struggle with eating disorders are probably the bravest, strongest people that I know, even if they don't feel that.

So this kiddo has been able to tap into that, find that strength and recover.

And she has stayed recovered even though she can't physically come to my office, which is the power of the telemedicine that we've been able to to help provide for her.