This Crazy Life

It’s mud season in the Midwest.  And we live in the country on gravel roads.  There is lots of mud here.  A normal person probably has no idea how mud can even possibly relate to an eating disorder.  But it can.  Boy can it.  My daughter is a huge animal lover.  That is one of the things that we’ve tried to use to motivate her to leave her eating disorder behind.  It’s not working, but we’ll keep trying.  My sister has a dog that was recently diagnosed with nasal cancer.  Unfortunately, this is a very fast progressing cancer and is a death sentence in dogs.  He went downhill very quickly.  The beginning of this week my sister asked if my daughter would want to say goodbye to her dog.  I asked her, she of course said yes.  Well, my sister text yesterday, he had an awful night, and they were putting him down that afternoon.  So, she brought him to the lounge at the farm.  It rained all day yesterday, so there was lots and lots of mud.  I told all my daughters he was coming, and I would drive them down, so they didn’t have to walk through the rain and mud.  My sick daughter was not quite ready, so I took the other two down first and came back to get her.  Our dog was outside.  When she opened the door to get out of the car he jumped in and got mud on her foot from his muddy parts.  She was instantly paralyzed by fear.  There was mud on her skin.  The calories from the mud was going to seep into her skin and cause instant weight gain, massive, massive weight gain.  She couldn’t move.  She couldn’t get out of the car and risk stepping in more mud.  She had to go back to the house and get the mud off now.  She really wanted to see the dog, but she couldn’t do it.  Her eating disorder would not let her, because of mud.  So, I took her home so she could clean up.  I went back and my sister carried her dog to the van, and we drove up to the house so she could come back out and see him.  I’m glad she got to see him.  But I will never forget the look on her face about the mud.