Illness prevents teen from being able to eat

This is personal.

I should start with that disclaimer.

This is not about a stranger I met for an interview. This is a story about the girl across the street.

It's about Gentrie Hansen.

I knew her as a newborn and watched her grow up. She is girlhood personified. Happy. Friendly. Active. Pretty. Personable. When we pulled into the driveway or walked to the mailbox, she liked to shout out a greeting and conduct interviews across the street: How are you guys? What are you doing? Where are you going? This was between cartwheels in the grass.

And then I noticed she was absent. For months, we didn't see her. Well, it's winter, I told myself. Then spring came; still no Gentrie. I used to see her and her family at church on Sunday, but then we were assigned to another church building and lost that connection. Gone also was our pipeline for neighborhood news.

Quite by accident, we learned she is ill.

Surrounded by food, she is starving.

She hasn't eaten since Christmastime.

She is 14. She weighs 88 pounds — down from 112.

Gastroparesis, they call it. The best medical guess is that a virus attacked the nerves in her stomach. Anyway, her stomach no longer functions. When she was still trying to eat, she was vomiting a dozen times a day. She still vomits five or six times a day even though she no longer eats anything.

I saw her the other day for the first time in months, walking in the yard with her grandmother at her elbow. We sat on her front porch and talked. She was drawn and tired and thin.

She hasn't swallowed a bite of food or a sip of water in more than six months. She gets her food from a bag, via a pic line in her arm, 24 hours a day.

"I miss eating, a lot," she says.

She walks the aisles of the grocery store staring at food. She sees restaurants pass by as she is driven to another of her many hospital visits. She likes to watch cooking shows on cable during the day and takes notes for recipes.

"It breaks my heart," says Gentrie's Grandma Ann.

Food is everywhere but not for her. She has four siblings, including three large, athletic brothers who are all at least 6-foot-3, 220 pounds, the biggest being Braden, a 300-pound offensive tackle for the BYU football team. You think they don't knock back the food? It's torture for Gentrie. She cried when she saw the family eating.