Published: August 15, 2007 09:32 am      

Friends organize help with Sara Dixon’s medical expenses

“Bear ye one another’s burdens,” is an admonition from several places in our Bible, and it is a command that has struck a responsive chord with friends of the

Bill Dixon family. Bill is the owner/operator of Southern Protein Inc. and Sandra is the director of Health Information Management at ECU. The Dixons are normally the kind of people who help others and find it hard to accept help for themselves.

For the past year, the family has sought to find effective treatment for their 15 -year-old daughter, Sara Dixon, who suffers from anorexia nervosa and bullima nervosa as well as other conditions which make her condition more complicated than usual. According to the National Eating Disorder Association., anorexia nervosa has one of the highest death rates of any mental health condition.

The Dixon family has been told numerous times by different medical authorities that Sara will die without extensive inpatient treatment. They say that though eating disorders are classified as mental disorders, they affect the body physiologically.

Since the body becomes malnourished, all its processes slow down to conserve energy. Examples of physical complications caused by anorexia nervosa are low potassium, slowed heart rate, low blood pressure, heart failure, reduction of bone mass, muscle loss , weakness, growth of a downy layer of hair all over the body, severe dehydration which can result in kidney failure, slowed thought processes and anxiety and depression. Because Sara tends to become medically unstable more quickly than many people with eating disorders, medical and mental treatment cannot be separated.

Since July, 2006, Sara has had numerous hospitalizations, five months in two different eating disorder treatment centers, and was recently hospitalized for 3 weeks in a hospital in St. Louis, Mo. for medical stabilization and for about four weeks in an eating disorder treatment center in Kansas City, Mo. Eating disorder treatment centers for inpatient care cost more than $30.000 per month. To date, the Dixons have not had a great deal of cooperation from their health insurance company. This experience is not unusual according to a Texas doctor who is nationally known as an expert on eating disorders.

Sara has just been admitted for a second round of treatment at Ramuda Ranch in Arizona. With Sara’s life depending upon receiving inpatient care over a long period, the family is in need of financial aid.

Therefore, friends of the family have opened an account entitled “Sara Dixon Medical Fund” at Vision Bank, Ada. Karen Williams and Dave and Jodi Jackson have volunteered to organize fund raisers for the family beginning with a pancake breakfast on Saturday, August 18 from 7 a.m. until noon at New Bethel Church, Byng, followed by a community-wide garage sale on Friday-Saturday, Sept. 7-8 at the home of Dorothy Milligan, 611 South Main, Byng.

All efforts to help this family will be greatly appreciated by all of us who know and love them. At least to some extent, we can all have a part in “bearing one another’s burdens.”

Ordinarily, my column tends to be the sun-dial type, recording the sunny hours, but this week the emphasis is on the serious and heart-breaking news that is a big part of life sometimes.

Sandra Brockett Skaggs called me Saturday with news of her nephew, Anthony Brockett, 37, who is critically ill in Indianopolis, Ind. He has been struggling with cancer for almost two years and last week doctors administered a more aggressive kind of chemo treatment which caused his kidneys to shut down.

His parents, Ronnie and Doris Brockett, left immediately to be at Anthony’s bedside, for doctors do not expect him to live more than a few days. His family consists of his wife, Tina, and five children ranging in age from one to 13 years.

I knew Anthony when he was a student at Byng in the class of ’87. His mother, Doris, a math teacher in the high school, was a friend and respected colleague. She has now retired but continues to teach part-time at Byng.