Emily Felix

Yeah, so I was diagnosed with pre-traumatic anorexia when I was 12 in my first year of secondary school.

So I suppose the symptoms of the condition only really started appearing in my last two years of primary school.

And they were very small at first, like poor coordination, unsteady on my feet.

just poor at sport and exhausted after simple activities like walking home from school or whatever.

And then it did.

It was getting worse and worse, I suppose.

And fatigue was becoming a bigger issue.

And I was coming home from school covered in bruises, unexplained bruises, really.

I couldn't remember what I had experienced.

Don't know if I had fallen or banked into things.

And we kind of, we then went to a private physio

And that followed by private OT, who both kind of stressed to my mum and my dad that, no, something is wrong here.

This isn't an ordinary case of just a clumsy child.

So I was then referred on to a paediatrician who...

She was very much of the view that I was just a clumsy child.

There was nothing more to that than I was a clumsy child.

I will always be a clumsy child.

But she referred me on to get a scan, an MRI of my brain, just to rule out a brain tumour.

So when that was ruled out, that I had no brain tumour,

then I was told, yeah, see, it's not brain tumour, you're just clumsy.