Young girl bedridden for her entire teenage years found to be suffering from grief

A young woman has revealed how she was bedbound for her entire teenage years and became suicidal after developing a mystery illness - that turned out to be grief.
Angie McEvoy, 26, spent more than a decade confined to her bedroom after she suddenly started vomiting and suffering from excruciating pain aged 11.

She often threw up at least three days a week, saw her weight drop drastically and had to miss school, but baffled doctors struggled to diagnose her condition.
It was only when she was referred to a psychologist in her early 20s - after years of hospital tests and suicidal thoughts - that Angie discovered the cause of her problems.



It turned out she was suffering from grief over the death of her beloved aunt, who was like a 'second mother' to her and passed away just months before her sickness emerged.
Because she had 'bottled up' her emotions at the time, Angie's grief had manifested itself in a physical way - through more than 10 years of sickness and pain.

In doing so, it had ‘taken away’ her teenage years, leaving her largely bedbound as her classmates grew up, got boyfriends and went out partying without her.

Now, Angie, from Dublin, Ireland, has 'worked through' her grief and is volunteering full-time with a UK foundation for suicide prevention and mental health awareness.
Speaking exclusively to the Mirror Online, the brave young woman, who went back to school to sit the exams she missed, said:

"My auntie died from breast cancer when I was 11.
"She was like a second mother to me. She was in the house every day and she was such a strong person. If anyone had a problem, she’d be there.
"The psychologist told me I'd never grieved properly for her. I didn't cry because I didn't want to upset anyone else and I bottled everything up.Instead, I ended up grieving through being sick. I would pray at night that I would die because I didn't want to spend another day vomiting.
"The psychologist told me that when teenagers and kids don't know how to deal with grief, it can manifest itself in a physical way."