Monday, November 7, 2011

Is there a way to get social serivces involved with a severely anorexic co-worker?

I work with a 56-57 year old woman who is severely anorexic. She is aproximately 5'2 and I am being completely serious when I say she cannot way more than 75 lbs--and most likely ways slightly less. I am younger and started with this company 3 years ago (she has been there over 20) and during this time she has pretty much lost contact with her entire family because of this disease. Other long time employees say she has been anorexic (though never this bad) as long as they can remember. When I started, she was obviously very underweight, and probably weighed 85 lbs. Though she is usually covered up, I've caught glimpses of her arms and collar bone and what you see is like looking at a picture of a holocaust victim. She lives about a mile from work and walks everywhere. Every single day since I've worked there she walks for about 50 minutes during lunch. Pretty much the only thing I've ever seen her eat in 3 years is a yougert after her lunch walks and a diet soda at 10 am sharp. Other than that-- quite literally I've seen her eat 1 single scrambled egg on one occasion and a few bites of toast on another--both were during special office meetings hosted at restraunts. What has really been signifigant and causes great alarm as of late is that her husband of close to 20 years left her last year and moved across the country because of her refusal to try to get better, and now she lives all by herself. Her daughter (who lives in another state) has in the past few months finally come to a breaking point with the situation and has had to stop speaking with her and won't allow her contact with her grandaughter (entirely because of her disease)--and she still refuses to seek treatment. She will acknowledge she has a problem, but in the same breath talk about how healthy she is. Slowly she is getting worse and worse--It is truly the most horrific and disturbing thing I've ever had to experience in the work place. I am convinced I will never meet someone like this ever again in my life. Recently she had to get taken the the ER because of a shingles outbreak and the doctors released her! It truly seems that she is to the point now that she cannot make sound mental decisions for herself and I would think that the state should be able to step in and force her into treatment. She is committing a slow suicide and no one seems to be doing anything about it! I've spoken with my supervisor- and she has escalated it to the higher ups, and apparently there is nothing the company can do unless she has a medical emergency on work property. Everyone in our office is at their witts end with the situation. She looks like a corpse walking-- I mean she honestly makes Karen Carpenter look of normal weight!! Any suggestions on who I can contact or what would be some appropiate steps to take?

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