Teen loses sight from rare extreme eating disorder
The grounding of the Rena on the Astrolabe Reef in 2011 is a sobering reminder of how quickly large ships are affected by tides. ‘‘It was my third day when the Rena wrecked,’’ Evans says. ‘‘When that ship arrived it was considered big. It was only 236 metres long which shows how fast things have moved.’’
With the tow rope now connected, chatter stops as the tug, and Evans enter work mode. Evans listens intently to the radio awaiting orders from the pilot on board the Alfirk. The pilot is a Port of Tauranga specialist who boarded the vessel just before it entered Tauranga. Their job is to relay information to the tugs to ensure the Alfirk arrives safely and quickly.
‘‘Initially the tug was used to slow the ship down. Once we’re at the correct point we assist the turn by pulling it around.’’
The Alfirk has moved well through the shipping lanes which are clear of recreational boaties. A minor adjustment or two was sent through the radio to the lead tug, the Tai Timu. Once the Alfirk enters port the tugs start to earn their keep.
‘‘Tug aft pull back,’’ are the instructions, and Evans moves back to pull the end of the ship while the Tai Pari pushes the front. This is the start of a long handbrake turn to allow the large ship to dock. As the rope tightens, vibrations shoot through the tug as it starts to pull the rear of the Alfirk around.
Engineer Glen Mouat keeps an eye on the engine readings in front of him. The engines are powerful andmust be closely monitored so any problem can be detected early. Today all lights are in the green.
After fifteen minutes of pulling Evans is instructed to push the ship, which is now facing back out to sea. The Tai Timu alternates between pushing at different strengths to coincide with the movements of the Te Pari. Eventually, the giant 11,294-unit capacity container ship is lashed to the port with cranes while customs and crew members descend upon it to ensure a quick unload.
Cranes pick up containers and drop them off ready for large container straddlers to collect them from the ground and move them to rail lines, waiting trucks or storage stacks. With everything running smoothly, the port can unload 37.4 containers on average per hour per crane, which is important if the Alfrik is going to make its exit window to continue the remainder of its loop to Australia, Asia and back to America.
‘‘This ship is scheduled to be out by 3am,’’ Evans says while checking his schedule. ‘‘If it misses that window it will be another 12 hours before it can exit again.’’ The job of pulling the Alfrik out to sea will be up to another tug captain. After 13 hours at sea, Evans’ role in the supply chain has ended and he is looking forward to some ‘‘R&R’’.
The tug finally docks at its home berth, and Evans can relax.
‘‘I love driving tugs, they are a lot of fun. The moment I think I can no longer handle the tug, I’ll take myself off the tug.’’
But Evans hopes that will not be the end of his nautical career, a life he has lived since he was 16. At one point he even spent 110 days straight living on a boat.
‘‘I’m hoping I’ll be able to pilot a lot longer than I have to stop working on the tugs,’’ he says. ‘‘Piloting is what I came out here to do, I do two weeks on tugs and two weeks piloting at the moment. The tugs are a lot of fun but require a lot of dexterity.’’ JAKE Thompson ate anything until he was three – but then trauma tied to his food allergies turned his diet into meals made mainly of chips, bread, chicken tenders and nuggets.
For the 18-year-old from Greymouth, his intense aversion to anything mushy or wet, combined with a severe allergy to peanuts and dairy, led to a diet consisting of only dry, yellow foods.
Common fruit and vegetables would bring on a severe extreme physical or emotional reaction.
His parents would serve dinner, but his refusal to eat would lead to clashes at the table.
‘‘There was obviously a lot of fear and resistance from Jake and you’re trying to make him do something that I didn’t realise he actually physically couldn’t,’’ his mother Dearne said.
‘‘I couldn’t understand why he couldn’t just sit down and eat it. Everyone has to eat things they don’t like. But, then it just upsets everybody and there is screaming and yelling.’’
‘‘Chicken tenders every night,’’ Jake chips in, laughing.
Jake’s picky eating was something that ‘‘became normal’’, his mumsaid, and when it was discussed with doctors when he was about 10 or 11, GPs thought he would grow out of it.
It wasn’t until a psychologist said he was on the extreme end of a rare eating disorder only recognised in 2013 – Avoidant/ Restrictive Food Intake Disorder or ARFID – that the family realised what had been plaguing Jake for so long.
By 15, he was ‘‘getting slammed’’ with illness after illness including deteriorating eyesight, glandular fever, a bone infection and recurrent Bell’s Palsy. An ophthalmologist eventually diagnosed his blindness as coming from a nutritional deficiency.
‘‘I was crying my eyes out. Just going ‘it’s all my fault, I didn’t feed you right’ and Jake’s sitting there going, ‘it’s all my fault because I didn’t eat’,’’ Dearne said. ‘‘So we ended up going to a psychologist and she was the one who first brought up the eating disorder.’’
Jake described his revulsion to certain foods as the ‘‘fear of the unknown’’.
‘‘Half of it is kind of like this voice in your head, that puts up a wall of just things that could happen. Your conscious or whatever is looking at that wall and saying ‘that’s scary I’m not going anywhere near that then’.’’
He then began food therapy. Some sessions would take up to an hour and half just to eat one food from his list and he recalls only walking out once.
Despite his struggles, he has finished therapy now, which gave Jake the confidence to enrich his diet to include foods such as almonds, black beans ‘‘straight out of the tin’’ and a liking, or tolerance at least, of broccoli and cooked carrot.
‘‘He will generally try stuff now and before there was no way he would consider it,’’ his mum said.
The pair will feature in a TVNZ special tonight titled The Secret Lives of Fussy Eaters.
‘‘Given what’s happened to him, if people can pick it up and get some help earlier then you should,’’ Dearne said.
Dietician and chef Andrea Palmer said parents should seek help if a child is showing anxiety around food, or refusing to eat with the family.
‘‘I think that parents need to trust their own instincts, and they know their children so to trust that and seek help.’’ Jake’s story features on The Secret Lives of Fussy Eaters, tonight at 7.30pm on TVNZ 1.
I was crying my eyes out. Just going ‘it’s all my fault, I didn’t feed you right’ and Jake’s sitting there going, ‘it’s all my fault because I didn’t eat’.’ DEARN THOMPSON