LITTLETON — Active in choir, a member of the National Honor Society, and a star athlete, 18-year-old senior Madi O’Dell had all the appearances of a perfectly composed student. But she spent years shackled by a dark secret.
On Tuesday, O’Dell stood poised and confident in front of an auditorium filled with her Chatfield High School peers as she candidly explained her life’s greatest struggle — bulimia, an eating disorder that is “characterized by a secretive cycle of binge eating followed by purging.”
Diagnosed in September of her sophomore year, she was hospitalized three months later because of a dangerously low heart rate of 32 beats per minute.
“I was at risk of heart failure, and I didn’t even know it. I could’ve died on the court, in this school, in the gym,” O’Dell explained to more than 1,000 peers throughout the day’s six sessions.
“I do not want people to have to go down the path that I went down,” O’Dell said.
With the help of school administrators and Children’s Hospital Colorado, which is where she was treated, O’Dell organized a week-long awareness campaign in her school to coincide with National Eating Disorders Awareness Week.
“I don’t know anything like this, honestly, in the state,” said Jennifer Hagman, a doctor in the eating-disorder program at Children’s Hospital.
Anorexia nervosa — a self-starvation disorder — has the highest mortality rate of any mental disease — and teens ages 16 to 18 are the highest-risk population for developing a disorder, said Hagman.
What began as a goal to eat healthier gradually spiraled into O’Dell’s all-consuming obsession.
“My personality changed,” O’Dell said. “I became this vicious, mean person.”
O’Dell’s parents brought her to Children’s on Dec. 7, 2009, for what she thought was a routine checkup. After the eating-disorder specialists determined the seriousness of her condition, O’Dell spent the next seven days under constant hospital observation. She spent several months more under specialized outpatient care.
“I was a mess, to be honest. It’s probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my entire life, and it will probably be one of the hardest things I ever do,” O’Dell said.
O’Dell’s courage opened pathways for others to share experiences.
Sarah Suzuki, also a senior at Chatfield, spoke about her battle with anorexia.
“You have to find something else that you love more than the eating disorder,” Suzuki said.
This was a key point that Hagman highlighted for those struggling.
“Someone with an eating disorder doesn’t really want to eat more or exercise less … so you’ve got to have something, a motivating reason, dragging you over that hill,” Hagman said.
Often associated with young women, eating disorders can strike any gender, age or personality. The focus of Tuesday’s sessions, as well as of Thursday night’s open community forum, was identifying for students and parents the “red flags.”
“These are really outstanding students, often the school’s top students, who get hit with eating disorders,” Hagman said.
“If you have that high-achieving, high-striving athlete, watch out because this can happen,” O’Dell said.
Researchers say 10 to 15 percent of eating disorders strike men, but Hagman sees that number growing, as is the number of young children affected.
“The medical risks really grow the longer you’ve had the illness. If you get beyond that two-year mark, your chances of reversing medical impacts is really getting lower,” Hagman said.
O’Dell says her eating disorder used to control her and that now she’s in control, but it still lingers.
“Each day, (it) gets farther and farther back in my head,” O’Dell said, “but I don’t know if it will ever really leave, because we have memories.”
Kristen Leigh Painter: 303-954-1638 or kpainter@denverpost.com
