‘I’d choke 20 times on a yoghurt’: The woman who can’t swallow
Samantha Anderson woke up at home in Brisbane one day and couldn't swallow. Her life was to become a living nightmare.
She had taken her breakfast, peanut butter on toast, to eat in the studio, but for some strange reason, she couldn't get a single bite down. "I went to swallow and I couldn't," she told news.com.au. "It didn't happen. I choked. "I was confused, and ended up having to cough it out. I tried a few more times. That gulp just didn't happen." Sam was shaken, but brushed off what had happened - until she couldn't eat again at lunchtime, and dinner. By the end of the day, she was starving.
Sam's life had become a living nightmare.
She stopped seeing friends, and wore loose clothing to hide the fact her weight had plummeted from 60 to 45 kilos
"The whole day became a battle for survival. I thought, 'I'm going to starve to death or choke to death, either way it's coming for me.'
"My life, my world had been devastated. I had nothing positive to say anymore. I was a hermit."
Some friends told her she looked great, and that they wanted to be on her diet. Sam was horrified. "I was a 40-year-old mother weighing less than I did at 14."
A year and a half after the problem began, it became clear Sam was suffering from malnutrition. Her hair was falling out, her skin was dry and her dry mouth had wreaked havoc on her teeth. She was anaemic and at as much risk of heart failure as a morbidly obese person.
Four years on, Sam has learned to eat some foods that can be chewed with water until they become liquid, including mashed potato, cake and bread without grains. She can't eat mincemeat or anything fibrous, and she cannot eat alone, because "it's too dangerous."
The wife and mum says she's realised who her real friends are. "People were using words like 'phobia' and 'breakdown'," she said. "I felt judged and betrayed by the people that should have known me better than that.