Lauryn Lax didn’t think anything was wrong with her. Since she was nine year old, she’d practiced anorexic behaviors, but didn’t think it was making her unhealthy. At twenty-seven years old, she was 79 pounds.
She’d been in and out of treatment her entire life, but to no effect.
It seemed like her anorexia would eventually cause her death. But that’s when a group of strangers approached Lauryn at her YMCA gym.
These strangers, before approaching her, had been concerned for her when they saw her at their shared gym. One of them, Andy Clough, said, “Her body was deteriorating, you could see it.”
So they called her parents, who confirmed what they already knew—she was anorexic. This group of concerned gym goers decided something had to change. One gym goer, Judith Hill, told CBS, “We can’t sit back, and one day she not be here because we didn’t do something.”
They approached Lauryn in a parking lot, and told her they were taking her to a hospital to get her vital signs checked, and that they wouldn’t take no for an answer.
At first she was defensive, but they convinced her to go with them. When she saw a doctor, she was immediately transferred to a hospital, as her heart rate was so low that her doctors thought she would need a pacemaker.
After three days in the ICU and three weeks in the cardiac arrest unit, her doctor gave her an ultimatum.
Lauryn says, “The doctor came to me and said you can stay another six to eight weeks in bed with a feeding tube, or you could go to a residential treatment center to get to the bottom of your illness.”
So Lauryn went to a treatment center in Miami, where she stayed for over a year.
Now that she is in recovery, she is thankful for the people who approached her with their concern. She says that they definitely saved her life, and that “they were the answer to a prayer that I didn’t know I was praying for.”
Lauryn now has her doctorate in occupational therapy. She opened a treatment center called THRIVE to help those suffering from eating disorders through holistic therapy.
