Racing against reality

LOVELAND, Colo. – Brittany Bethel sensed the eyes in the coffee shop giving her a quick scan before darting away when she looked up. The former University of Northern Colorado swimmer has become immune to the stares.

Bethel, 21, is battling anorexia nervosa. At 5-foot-4, she weighs just 75 pounds. Her hair is thinning, her face ashen.

That fight nearly cost Bethel her life: In September, she went into cardiac arrest while running on a campus track. Soon after, Bethel was suspended from school and banned from campus, because university officials considered her a danger to herself.

Now she’s fighting to have the ban against her lifted – a “persona non grata” order that appears on a university Web site listing those banned from campus. Bethel’s name and image are posted along with that of Mitch Cozad, a former punter who is accused of stabbing his rival on the Bears’ football team and is awaiting trial on first-degree attempted murder charges.

She’s still stunned by it all.

“They didn’t want me on campus? I didn’t understand. What did I do? It’s all so confusing to me,” Bethel said.

Bethel and her lawyer, Erik Johnson, have succeeded in getting the school to change the format of the Web page, launched after the Virginia Tech shootings, so that her photo doesn’t appear with others. But the site doesn’t explain why those listed are banned.

That infuriates Johnson.

“They shouldn’t have put her on that list with dangerous people,” Johnson said. “She wouldn’t hurt anyone. She’s hurt by this and embarrassed by it.”

University officials wouldn’t comment on the specifics of Bethel’s case. But they said persona non grata orders are issued for a variety of reasons.

“It’s the behavior – holding a person accountable for behavior,” said Nate Haas, a Northern Colorado spokesperson. “It can be anything deemed inappropriate.”

After it was learned the school had placed an individual battling a medical condition on the Web site university president Kay Norton issued a statement.

“People who receive PNG orders aren’t necessarily dangerous; they are unwelcome on our campus because they have violated our code of conduct,” Norton said April 25. “I assure you that we do not issue persona non grata orders because of someone’s medical condition.”

Bethel can apply for readmission to the school if she follows certain conditions, such as providing letters from a therapist and nutritionist about her progress.

Instead, she’s applying to Colorado State to pursue a fresh start, plus a degree in sports and exercise science.

Bethel can’t pinpoint when her illness started, but she thinks it was around her sophomore year at Mountain View High School in Loveland. She thought then the skinnier she got, the better she’d perform.

As a 115-pound junior in high school, Bethel took second in the consolation finals at the Class 4A state meet in the 100-meter freestyle, finishing in 56.08 seconds. By her senior year, Bethel had dropped to 100 pounds, but her times did not. She was 22nd at state and couldn’t swim faster than 57.35.

With her times not falling, she worked out harder. She exercised an average of six hours a day – running, swimming, lifting weights and then back to the pool for more laps – on 1,000 calories a day.

“At that point, the correlation between losing weight and swimming fast was lost,” she said. “It had become just a bad habit.”

Even so, Bethel practiced with the swim team in 2004 – trying to prove herself in order to earn a scholarship – but never competed. In April 2005, she was diagnosed with anorexia, left school at her doctor’s urging and entered treatment at Children’s Hospital for six weeks.

Bethel said she returned to the team on a trial basis that fall, with team officials keeping a diligent watch on her weight. In December, with her weight fluctuating, they told her to concentrate less on swimming and more on getting healthy.

By the spring of 2006, Bethel had convinced UNC to allow her to work out with the team in away-from-the-pool exercises. But she manipulated the scale at weigh-ins, wearing baggy clothes with extra layers underneath, putting keys, coins and her cell phone in her pocket and drinking lots of water before stepping on.

She was dismissed for the final time in April 2006 after ending up in the emergency room on several occasions with low potassium levels and dehydration, signs that she was restricting her diet again.

Dr. Kurt Dallow, the Northern Colorado team physician, couldn’t address her specific case. He did say “athletics tend to bring this out, particularly sports like Brittany was in. There’s a fine balance. You do well at 130 (pounds), maybe a little better at 125. But then you get to a point where you metabolize muscle mass and you lose it (your speed).”

In an e-mail response to queries, UNC swim coach Nancy Hinrichs said Bethel swam in only two practices approximately three years ago but hasn’t been a member of the team for the past two years. She wouldn’t comment further.

Bethel’s lawyer supports the school’s decision to dismiss her from the swim team.

“You couldn’t have her in the pool (in her condition),” Johnson said. “I agree with what the school did. So does she. I just think the way they went about the Web site and banning her (from campus) was unnecessary and doesn’t accomplish anything.”

In and out of three eating disorder clinics over the past three years, Bethel needed a wake-up call. It didn’t come with her cardiac arrest, being suspended from school or having a no trespass order against her.

What shook her was the death of a 16-year-old girl whom Bethel had befriended. Until then, she’d never personally known anyone to die of an eating disorder.

“Her heart gave out,” Bethel said. “That scared me. It really put it into reality.”

Now, she’s working with a nutritionist and a therapist. She had a feeding tube placed into her small intestine March 13. Every night, she hooks up the tube to an IV and ingests a concentrated formula as she sleeps.

She’s also slowly graduating toward solid food. She can eat yogurt, eggs and tofu.

Still, she has had heart problems because of low electrolyte levels. Her skin is constantly dry thanks to years of malnourishment, her hair is much thinner, she has signs of osteoporosis, and she’s constantly fatigued.

Asked if the worst is behind her, Bethel said, “I think so.”

She paused.

“Anorexia kept me from going after my potential, took my dreams away from me,” she said. “I’ve lost so much because of (anorexia). I can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to do it anymore. I want my life back.”