Eating was a struggle for me, especially when I was a little girl. Thanks (or no thanks) to Cystic Fibrosis, my pancreas has been almost completely useless since birth, and the only thing it's been able to produce for the past 17 years have been small amounts of insulin, but even that has decreased with age, and there's never been much I could really do about it. With diet, I could slow the progression, but I could never stop it. 

Back when I was ten years old and younger, the CF doctors really had no idea what to do with me. They tried to explain to me and my parents that getting sick after every meal was just normal with CF, and the best way to deal with it was to accept it. Because CF is so rare, they were only beginning to understand it. Through me, they were learning, and still are over ten years later. 

They had me on a pill that increased my appetite, as well as a pill that decreases nausea, and on the highest enzyme dose possible (enzymes are the pills I take to digest my food), which back then, because enzymes were so new, I took 7 pills with every meal (these days I take 5). If all else failed, which it often did, doctors told me to just chug down a glass of laxatives and wait the pain out. It didn't help much.

My meals were insane even then. At school, I was expected to eat twice as much as everyone else, and my doctors told the school staff that I couldn't go outside for recess until I finished all of my food. I became a master as shoving all of my food down my throat just so I could go outside at the same time as everyone else, and the kids started to circle around me just to egg me on and watch as I inhaled two full lunches in under 15 minutes. The staff stopped having to cheer me on so much because the students took that role. At the time, no one really cared to ask me why I ate so much or why I often excused myself to the bathroom for such a long time, and I was totally ok with that. 

At home, I'd eat entire bags of pizza rolls in one sitting and drink at least a gallon of milk everyday. Sometimes, when I refused to eat, my parents would use reverse psychology on me, and then wave a $5 bill in my face to get me to eat, which I'd do and I'd feel very proud. But about an hour later, I'd get sick, and all of those feelings of pride and joy would go away.