At age 13, Carmen Cusido weighed 60 pounds. What began as a desire to be "thin and beautiful" turned into an obsession. At the height of her eating disorder, she was consuming just 300 calories a day. Now, 10 years later, Carmen is healthy, and happy with the way she looks. But she hasn't forgotten the hard road she traveled to get here.

"By the time I was admitted to a hospital pediatric unit, I was so weak from self-starvation I was assisted by a wheelchair... Hot tears were running down my cheeks when a doctor there placed a naso-gastric tube – a thin tube that went from my nose to my stomach – that, like an intravenous, would provide extra nutrients if I wasn't eating all my meals."

Carmen spent most of 1997 in that Eating Disorders Unit. In 2000 she decided she was "tired of being sick and tired". She has been on a steady, positive road to recovery ever since. Read more at Thnt.com.

Labels: recovery, support, treatment