Four years ago, weighing less than 90 pounds, Heidi Lynne Haugen’s ravaged body could take no more.
She died alone March 26, 2001, in her Palm Springs, Calif., condo, still believing she was too fat.
Anorexia nervosa kills. Her family wants that message passed on to every medical insurance company in the country.
Haugen, 30, who was 5 feet 8 inches tall, battled anorexia for 15 years. Her sister and best friend, Shannon Luther of Marysville, is still in therapy trying to deal with the death. When her sister was alive, Luther implored her sister to eat, to get her help, yelling at her and crying enough tears to flood the Stillaguamish Valley.
“I kept saying she needed a nutritionist,” Luther said. “She looked like a little old lady. Heidi died from multiple drug intoxication that the doctors prescribed. She needed medical doctors, not just a psychiatrist.”
Their parents found resources to help their daughter. Haugen tried treatment programs and support groups, but slipped back to incessant exercising and bingeing and purging. Her mother and sister are fighting to have anorexia recognized as a physical ailment, rather than mental, so medical treatment will qualify for insurance coverage.
Sharon Haugen, from Bullhead City, Ariz., said people can find information on the condition at www.anad.org, the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders.
According to the ANAD Web site, not everyone who is low weight is anorexic; it is the refusal to maintain a normal weight that is the key factor. Luther said ANAD estimates inpatient treatment for anorexia can cost between $30,000 to $50,000 per month.
A person with the disorder has an intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, even if underweight. The intense fear is powerful enough to cause individuals to diet to the point of starvation.
Sharon Haugen organized the For the Love of Heidi Eating Disorder Education Campaign. Sharon Haugen and her daughter plan to testify before the Eating Disorder Coalition in Washington, D.C., at the end of June about the need for anorexia insurance coverage. Her daughter is selling a calendar to raise money for eating disorder education.
For more information, e-mail sjjluther.brettgunn@verizon.net.
On the calendar is a picture Heidi Haugen painted, showing a face with huge, imploring eyes. Her mother has displayed her daughter’s work, she calls “Eyes of the Soul,” in exhibits in Arizona.
The women want to educate youngsters about eating disorders. Luther suffers when anorexia is a topic for humor on television. For instance, a promotion for the show “Friends” playfully referred to the three women as the “anorexic chicks.”
When her sister would try to get Heidi Haugen to eat, they would fight.
“I would see her get a salad, and a big glass of water,” Luther said. “She would tell me to get off her back.”
Water would help the food come back up when her sister would vomit.
Luther has nightmares in which her sister reaches out from her coffin, begging to be fixed.
“I have guilt,” Luther said. “She lived a sad, lonely life.”
In her diary, Heidi Haugen wrote a poem that said in part: “I’m really scared and don’t know what to do. I’m lost and afraid and feeling much too blue. I hope at some point a friend will come through because I’m scared to death, and I don’t know who to turn to.”
Haugen said she wanted to get well, for things to get better, but it was so hard and took concentration, dedication and commitment, something that always failed her.
“Change is so hard,” Heidi Haugen wrote. “I want to be well, healthy, happy and someday married with children, and I know the only way out of this rut is to change, just doing it is so scary.”
Every night, Luther lights a candle in front of a picture of her artistic sister and says “Good night.”
Her sister would tell the family that she was a disappointment to them. Heidi Haugen would say she wanted to become a lovely butterfly and fly away.
To honor her dead sibling, Luther got a tattoo of a butterfly on her arm.
“There is a hole I can’t fill,” Luther said. “I don’t cry every day, it’s been four years, but it was just such a senseless death.”
Columnist Kristi O’Harran: 425-339-3451 or oharran@heraldnet.com
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