‘My body is tired’: St. John’s woman fears she’s exhausted all avenues to get treatment for debilitating eating disorder

'I don’t have it in me to fight with the government for another 11 months,' Erica Bradbury told CTV News. (File, Pexels)

For the past 13 months, Erica Bradbury and her dog, Zuri, have moved back in with her parents in a small home in the east end of St. John’s, N.L.

It’s not the life she imagined for herself at 37, but it’s one of the only ways to keep herself as comfortable as possible, as she battles a severe case of anorexia nervosa that Bradbury believes will soon take her life.

“Severe bone loss, muscle atrophy, cardiac ischemia,” Bradbury explains. “Basically, there’s nothing really left for me… My body is tired. It’s giving up on me.”

Bradbury’s years have been a rotating door of treatments, hospital admissions and recovery programs. She believes she’s now exhausted anything available to her in her home province, Newfoundland and Labrador, and can’t imagine fighting any further for the funding and referrals that she would require to attend a program where she has felt some success, in Denver, Colo.

“I don’t have it in me to fight with the government for another 11 months. My body is not going to last another 11 months, at the rate things are going,” she said.

“I barely made it down there last time, and I’m just exhausted.”

One experience stands out: In 2023, according to her family, Bradbury was discharged from an eating disorder program in St. John’s because her weight was dropping, and her condition was getting worse.

Staff told her she fell outside the confines of what the program could handle.

Bradbury and her family believe the care she’s getting in Newfoundland and Labrador does not meet her needs.

“They gave me a phone number of a dietician and said I could call every second week,” she said. “But nothing consistent. It was basically, ‘yeah, good luck to you.’”

In a statement to CTV News, Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services said it couldn’t discuss particular cases, but was committed to working with clients to find “the most appropriate treatment options and supports for them.”

“In some situations, if a person’s needs extend beyond what our program can provide, we may explore other treatment options that could be a better fit, which may include services outside the province,” a spokesperson wrote. “It’s important to note that individuals can move through different levels of care based on their needs and readiness.”

Services are underfunded: doctor

Dr. Blake Woodside, an emeritus at the University of Toronto and a long-time service provider in the field of eating disorders, said services across the country are woefully underfunded, which he believes is a blind spot in the health-care system.

“If this was an illness of middle-aged men, there would be a clinic in every hospital in this country,” he said, noting the evidence that suggests between 15 to 20 per cent of people with severe and enduring eating disorders will die with the disease.

“But this is a mental illness that mostly affects young women, and that’s a group that are blatantly discriminated against. It’s not viewed as serious, it’s viewed as volitional, it’s viewed as a bad habit.”

Within the next week, Bradbury will have a feeding tube implanted into her body to try to make the most of her strength. It’s part of a palliative care plan to manage Erica’s symptoms.

She works full-time hours, doing as much as she can to contribute to her workplace.

She says it’s about keeping as much of a routine as possible.

“I just want some sort of normalcy and quality of life,” she said.

Bradbury dreamed of being a teacher or a health-care worker. Someone who helped others.

“It’s been an exhausting road, and I wonder if I had gotten the proper support and the proper treatment that I’ve been fighting for for years, if maybe it wouldn’t have gotten to this point,” she said.

“Maybe I would be able to work to my full capacity and to be able to live on my own.”

For her parents, Lynn and Barry Bradbury, the long road of treatments and advocacy has been “a nightmare.”

As parents, much of the task of advocating for Erica’s health-care services has fallen to them — working to find referrals, treatments, funding, or rushing to the hospital when Erica’s potassium levels crash.

“I don’t want my daughter to continue to suffer, for her mental and physical health to continue to decline,” said Lynn. “And I don’t want my daughter to die.”

“Every patient at any stage of an eating disorder deserves treatment. And that is not what has happened.”

Eating Disorder Awareness Week has come and gone in Newfoundland and Labrador. Erica wants to continue to advocate for better services and inclusion in the conversation for patients like her, who live with what’s called severe and enduring illnesses.

“There are other people in my situation. There are other people that are going to come up and become my situation. So, if I can help one person by speaking out, then that’s what I want do.”