“I am 16 years old and living with a secret,” Kaytee says. “I am a diabulimic. Because I want to lose weight, I don’t take my insulin.”

“She could have organ failure. She could lose her eyesight,” says Kaytee’s mom, Michelle. “My biggest worry is that Kaytee will die.”

“I’ve had weight issues since fifth grade. I was 14 when I got diagnosed with diabetes, and I started gaining weight,” Kaytee says. “It just put my desire to be skinny in overdrive. I’m supposed to take insulin with everything that I eat, but five months after my diagnosis, I stopped taking my insulin.”

“She could eat what she wants and just not take her insulin, and then she wouldn’t gain weight,” Michelle explains. "When Kaytee denied that she was not taking her insulin, her doctor basically called her a liar. She manipulates the meter to get a false reading.”

“There was a bottle of fake blood. I would use those drops to get a normal reading," Kaytee explains. "The quickest amount of weight I lost was 14 pounds in three days. I have been hospitalized about four or five times. I’ve gotten to the stage where your lungs and kidneys start to fail, and you can go into a coma.”

Now, Michelle monitors her daughter closely and gives her the insulin

shots. “A mother’s supposed to be able to fix things, and I can’t fix this,” she says. 

“I’m always unhappy when I get the shot because I want to lose weight,” Kaytee says, crying. “Being skinny is the only thing I can control in my life. Sometimes it just seems that death would probably be easier than just dealing with it all."