Memoirs For Caron

I have had for a while a lot of Caron's things. She was kicked out of an apartment in 1997, in the valley region of Los Angeles, for not paying rent for three months in a row. She had no money. I remember she would have Bake Sales to try to earn money. It was the scariest, ironic, saddest, funniest, stupid thing to see her, a shrunken lost woman, with wrinkles because her body has grown smaller than her skin, with a big eager smile on her face, sitting behind a shakey wooden table covered with carefully wrapped baked goods she had spent days baking and perfecting (not a single nimble would pass her dry lips), that she was now trying to sell to passersby on a busy main street called Van Nuys. I don't think I liked her baked goods, I guess she should've been tasting some of them herself (but then again, of course, I'm picky) but I would buy some and sit with her, stretching for shade from the hot valley summer air. She would tell me about her dreams, her goals... how she was going to open up a treatment center for other women just like her, dying from eating disorders, and call it Angel House. She was obsessed with Angels, they decorated her bare apartment walls. I still have this silly Angel pin she gave me, even though a red heart stone has fallen out of it, the gold Angel remains, holding an empty casing where the heart once was.

I remember going on the Leeza Gibbons talk show with her... she swore up & down she'd try to get better, the show gave her a small amount of money to spend in therapy. But she never went. Nothing changed after the show. She was so far stuck in an Anorexia pattern. Eventually, Caron used the money she got from the show (which wasn't much) for drugs.

Note: There are two additional pages on Caron. Remembering Caron (here) and Photos of Caron (here)

Caron's lowest weight was 42 pounds, but she mostly (and barely) survived in the fifties, living for almost an entire year weighing under 60 pounds. (she was barely five feet tall, in fact, she shrunk from bone density loss and I think was 4 foot 9 eventually... regardless please don't even dare compare yourself or anyone to her...)

It wasn't quite living, though, it was a year of sickness - sicker and sicker sickness to low points where she, herself, was surprised to still be breathing. Though sometimes that was just about the only thing she could do - breathe.

She never even reached a point where she FELT thin enough.

Thin Enough does not exist.

Caron would often not have a place to live and would crash and various friends houses or end up staying in a motel (picture at left was taken at a motel somewhere in L.A., she thought this picture was funny because if you look closely you can see a joint in her hand). Caron did have lots of friends at this time. I have no idea how many different people she has encountered, she can be so charming and make you feel important somehow. She can also be funny, with her very dark sarcasm. But over time Caron herself (her personality) seemed to fade.

Above is a picture (Caron and a blonde friend in a hospital room... ) of Caron during what would be her last official inpatient eating disorders treatment. She refused to go to a full paid scholarship that myself and others had set up for her, as the final request we would make to her during a professional intervention we staged. A counselor came flew in from Arizona and was prepared to take Caron that evening to the treatment center out of state. And I remember actually being jealous of this outpouring of love and concern, wishing I had caused such a stir among people around me when I was sick as to acquire the dramatic, surprise intervention a group of us held one Saturday afternoon. It lasted for hours and ended in a county emergency room as we scrambled to get Caron medically cleared to fly to Arizona and she ended up refusing to go when she learned that her EKG was okay and she could, in fact, go. I think she had only agreed prior to that because she assumed, as several of us did, that she would not pass a medical clearance to travel. After that failed intervention, my devotion to "rescuing" Caron slowly began to fade, and I settled into my roll of supportive friend, available to listen to her, always prepared to treat her to coffee, and willing to shed tiny bits of recovery wisdom whenever I had the chance. She would ask me medical questions that would make me nervous. Why could she sometimes control her bowels and sometimes not? What were those white bumps all over her skin on her back? How come she would have bursts of energy if she wasn't eating enough? (that actually comes from the body signaling the brain that it needs to go out and hunt for food) And could I take some supplement drink (Sustacal) from work (at the time, I was working at Rader's Eating Disorder Unit) and not tell anyone who it's for because it's too expensive to buy in bulk?? At one point a kind male social worker that once worked with her donated several crates of Sustacal to her. She would ration that stuff, freeze it, then allow herself a certain number of spoonfuls of the icy, chalky meal replacement.

She had no quality of life. She was one of the "thinnest" anorexics medically known at one point (42 pounds) and she was miserable, isolated, completely trapped and obsessed, in pain, icy cold, constantly tired yet highly anxious, slow (in her thinking & speaking), delerious... and never once did she "enjoy" her thinness...

this page created for Caron with love from Lisa, may your story continue to help people recover from eating disorders