Warning: This article is about anorexia nervosa and video contained in it may be upsetting or triggering for some sufferers.
Update:
Rachael Farrokh, whose YouTube plea for help went viral this month (scroll down for video), has raised enough money to begin treatment for her anorexia nervosa at a specialised clinic.
The Californian woman released a video explaining how she’d been ill with the eating disorder for more than 10 years, while her husband Rod Edmondson created a GoFundMe page. Farrokh told CNN on Friday that she can now begin treatement after that GoFundMe page raised about $140,000 in just over three weeks.
The funds will pay for treatment at Farrokh’s San Clemente home, CNN reports; then when she builds up her strength by increasing her calorie intake, Farrokh will hopefully move to the ACUTE Center for Eating Disorders at the Denver Health Medical Center for treatment in Colorado.
Previously, Mamamia wrote:
At age 27, Rachel Farrokh was a clever, aspiring actress.
“She is a captivating, kind and amazing woman that has always put others before herself,” her husband Rod Edmondson says of the woman he’s loved for more than a decade.
Speaking to ABC News in the US, Mr Edmondson also describes his wife as a “a perfectionist” and an academic overachiever. But since graduating as valedictorian with honours, Rachael fell ill with anorexia nervosa.
Ten years into that battle, she’s dying.
Today, Farrokh spends her days and nights in a hospital bed inside her home, and needs assistance with basic tasks like getting dressed.
Farrokh has also suffered from heart, liver and kidney failure, osteoporosis, blood clots and edema, according to a GoFundMe page set up by Mr Edmondson.
Top Comments
I have a 15 year old daughter who has AN, we have had three re feeding hospital visits.This video scares me as I can see my daughter going down the same path. She is resolute in her desire to be skinner than any one else, it is a continuous loop that needs to be broken.
The facility they are talking about in Denver accepts Medicare. (I called for myself.) she is obviously disabled and could thus receive Medicare, (as I do for disability due to my anorexia,) thus no $ should be needed. Multiple treatment centers that have heard her story have offered to take her, after hearing her story, and some have offered full scholarships for treatment.
CJ, I understood Medicare is an insurance program in the US backed by the gov, but managed by private companies - prospective patients would need to have been paying into it? We all know there is no national public healthcare in the US? Are you saying she could access some form of welfare? It doesn't sound like she's worked? And her carer husband is unable to work.