Bulimia blamed as UC Berkeley student-athlete falls into coma

Daily Californian BERKELEY, Calif. (U-WIRE) -- A member of the UC Berkeley softball team is in critical condition due to a heart attack that may have been caused by bulimia. Theresa Kilgariff, who was about to enter her junior year at Berkeley, has been in a coma since Sept. 2. "We're a very close team," said teammate Whitney Floyd, a Berkeley senior. Floyd described Kilgariff as "kind of quiet, but very funny. [She] entertained us a lot." Coach Diana Ninemire said that there was a strong sense of camaraderie among the players, who are all hopeful that Kilgariff will come out of the coma soon. "It is a very close, unified team," she said. "When we first found out what happened, we were all shocked, We went to visit her and we all started crying. It is very hard and very sad. We're all praying for her." Floyd added that nobody on the team knew that Kilgariff was suffering from bulimia, a disorder where a person intentionally vomits after eating to avoid gaining weight. "We travelled with her, but we never noticed anything unusual," she said. "Everyone watches what they eat, and she didn't look overly thin. I was very shocked when I found out." According to Floyd, Kilgariff just seemed to be concerned about keeping a healthy lifestyle. "She was always running and working out, but I didn't see anything unusual in that," Floyd said. But she said that pressure to perform well may have contributed to her condition. "I didn't see her the whole summer, but I was told that by the end of the summer she was pushing herself a lot harder; that may have had something to do with it," she said. Medical problems caused by bulimia include dehydration, digestive disorders, severe dental problems and muscle weakness. As the disease progresses, ulcers and life-threatening heart irregularities can develop as well. According to a 1986 study published in The Physician and Sports Medicine, 32 percent to 74 percent of female athletes in various sports suffer from one of the three main types of disorders -- in which they binge, purge or starve. Ninemire said "there has been a girl with an eating disorder on the team before, at least, one that I knew about." "You see, you can't tell right away whether a person is bulimic. It is not like anorexia, where you can tell that they're really thin," she added. She added that in the previous incident, the players knew about the problem at an earlier stage, making it easier to stop it from getting out of hand.