This is the title of a chapter from Jenni Schaefer's book Life Without Ed. It deals with relapse and, more importantly, getting out of relapse. The theory is this: if your roof is leaking, you don't watch the water fall on your nice sofa and just wring your hands. Nope. You move the sofa and have the roof fixed.

It's a brilliant theory, and one that really needs to be applied not only to relapse but to ED treatment in the first place. Patch the roof; stop behaviors.

What triggered this chapter in my life today was much more literal.

Remember when my ceiling caved in back in January? It's leaked twice in the past week. Twice. Thankfully, nothing was damaged this time. But I'm going to be delivering a long tirade to management about their crap roof.

Which brings me back to the analogies. So you move the couch and patch the roof. Yay, you. And then the roof leaks again. So you patch it better. Yay, you again. The problem comes when the roof keeps leaking. Face it: the patch ain't doing the trick.

For a lot of my treatment, my insurance would (oh so graciously) allow the doctors to admit me to the hospital because of medical and psychiatric instability. Move the couch. I would gain weight. Patch the roof.

The problem was, the couch wasn't moved until it was already soaked. At 65% IBW, mildew was setting in. The couch was fairly ruined- it was more like a waterbed than a couch. But, says the noble health insurance company, we will pay to have it dry cleaned! And we'll paint the ceiling! Be happy! We don't have to do this!*

And on the day (and I do mean the exact day) I hit 85% IBW, I would be discharged. The roof was patched. I was good to go. Move the sofa back and get on with life.

The roof would leak again. Why? Any roofer looking at the patch would say they basically put a band-aid on a bullet hole. It looked better, but not a whole hell of a lot was fixed. Dry clean the couch, patch the roof.

Soon, of course, no one was willing to pay to patch the ceiling anymore. Clearly, there was something wrong with ME if my ceiling was still leaking. They had done their job. They had replaced the drywall, painted over the rust spots, added a support or two. Except the problem wasn't my ceiling; it was the roof itself. Someone needed to call in the big guns, the professional roofers, to get to the root of the problem and fix the roof once and for all. To bring my weight back up to the range where my biology meant it to be.

That would be expensive, I was told. Too expensive. I was on my own.

The irony is that, with all of the couch cleaning and ceiling patching, to have just re-roofed the place immediately would have been cheaper in the long run. Insurance companies don't think that way, however.

Apartment management is being like insurance companies. Fix the damn roof already! I want to scream. Pay for adequate treatment! Couches are being ruined, people are dying. If the patch keeps breaking, maybe you don't need another patch, a more sophisticated patch. Maybe you need a new roof.

Here's my idea for a new eating disorders roof:

• Don't accept anything less than 100% IBW and total cessation of ED thoughts and behaviors.
• Don't accept formal calculations of IBW; use growth charts, DNA, and a good helping of common sense.
• Weight restoration is only the first step. Healthy weight doesn't equal healthy mind.
• Don't blame people for "not moving the couch in time." The past is past. Let's move on.
• Enlist everyone possible to move the couch and keep it out of the way while the roof is fixed.
• And pay for treatment so that people have a roof to lay under when they are done with everything. Health care is a right, not a privilege. Don't make people feel guilty for something they had no control over.