AFTER spending much of her young life in hospital, with tubes up her nose, or on psychiatrists' couches, Suzy Degazon now leads a much more exciting life-to the full.

She lives in a Puerto Rico, and competes in the toughest of sports, the ironman triathlon.

She is the perfect example of how the dreaded wasting disease, anorexia, can be conquered.

Twelve years ago Miss Degazon, whose parents, Tony and Mary Degazon, run the Red House Hotel, Carlton Miniott, was barely alive. She was fed in a Teesside hospital by tubes, her weight down to four-and-a-half stones, with her family fearing she would die.

She is now a fit and healthy 8st 10lb.

Back home recently for four weeks to apply for a new passport and visa, she was seen biking across country or swimming every day at Thirsk swimming pool.

We caught her the morning both official documents arrived. The day after she jetted back to Puerto Rico to compete in more triple ironman triathlons - a seven-mile swim followed by 336 miles cycling with a 78-mile run to finish, all without sleep.

Now aged 38, the Middlesbrough-born athlete said: "If I can do anything to help people show there's a life other than sitting in bed with tubes up your nose, then I'll tell my story and do what I can.

"People are ignorant and scared of anorexia," she said. "Everyone thinks it is a slimming disease - it isn't, it's a control disease. All those years ago I wasn't trying to lose weight, I was trying to control my life, and this overtook every thing else.

"People with the illness are put in hospital mental wards with elderly people, drug addicts and manic depressives. All your privacy is taken away from you. You are force fed, and then they expect you to get better!"

Fortunately, after years of hospitalisation, in Teesside, North Yorkshire and London (17 admissions in all), Miss Degazon said she was lucky to meet the "best psychiatrist in the world".

She added: "He told my parents I would never get better unless I moved away from my present existence - it was the only way I would put the illness behind me. In Middlesborough or Thirsk, people would look at me and point if I was in a restaurant and say 'Look a her, she's the slimming nutter pastry chef who works in London and who will throw up in a minute'. I put my family through an awful lot of worry, but I didn't realise it at the time. They have had to put up with more than most-but they have been bricks."

So she got away, and in 1990 left England and has never looked back, travelling the globe.

She attended St Joseph's School in Middlesborough and completed a cookery course at Darlington College of Technology and even worked at the Savoy Hotel in London.

So how does someone, who cooks beautiful pastries, end up losing weight?

"I had a natural knack for creating desserts and wonderful iced cakes. But I pushed and pushed myself, wanted to be the best and had too high expectations of myself. This is when I lost control of myself and what I was about and the anorexia took over and the downhill slide began."

After leaving England, she has not had time to be ill, and her condition has disappeared.

"Throughout our childhood, my two brothers and I were taught how to save from our pocket money. I bought savings stamps instead of sweets and when I started working, saved my money there - I wasn't eating! So when I decided to leave England I had enough money saved for my flight ticket and set off backpacking."

After travelling to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, Fiji and Hawaii, she decided to immigrate to Australia where she had got a job as a pastry chef, but she failed the tough immigration regulations because of a hearing condition.

"How stupid can you get, " she said. "You don't cook with your ears."

Eventually, she returned to England to follow another dream - to become a qualified scuba diver

"I love the water. I can remember when at school when we were asked what we would like to do, I replied 'Be a fish in the water'. Well, I can't quite be that, but I can swim in and amongst them" she added.

Her adventures really became exciting from then on. Very street-wise by now after travelling the world, she set off again.

"I was travelling from the Dominican Republic to the Virgin Islands to meet up with some other divers. I hitched a ride on a boat, but the captain tried to attack me, so I had to jump off and swim to safety at two in the morning."

Miss Degazon moved to Puerto Rico, where she was adopted into a beach-front community.

By chance, in 1993, she entered a triathlon (the smaller version of the sport) spurred on by a friend, even though she had no experience and had to use a borrowed bike. And she came first in her age group.

She caught the bug and triathlons became her life. She completed her first ironman competition in 1997 and last year was the third-placed woman in the world.

Her luggage has changed somewhat nowadays. From those early journeys with a small backpack containing all she needed, and her passport strapped to her chest under her clothes, she now travels everywhere with her cycle in a special bike case with all her clothes stuffed inside it.

This year she hopes to be in the field at the world championships in Quebec and will compete in a women's triathlon in October in Puerto Rico, being staged in honour of her achievements.

"I don't have a regular trainer or programme. I don't have a car in Puerto Rico so I bike everywhere and swim three miles a day in the bay. While back home, I have swim a few miles every single day at Thirsk swimming pool and ran when I could."

She has fallen foul of immigration laws in many countries. "Being a woman, on my own, with an unexplained huge bike case, I was stopped and harassed at so many airports. In fact, I was treated like a displaced person.

"Now I have got my official passport, visa and work permit, everything should change."

She was worried that the essential documents were not going to come through, as she had no official job.

"But a guy who doesn't know me got my name from a web site and telephoned offering me a job as a freelance journalist reporting on sporting events such as triathlons for a New Zealand magazine on the web. It was just great and helped my work permit come through.

"I've made no money, and rely on sponsorship to pay for things like plane tickets. But there is so much in my head; perhaps one day I will write a book.

"I have nothing to prove anymore. I know what I can do. If I can do it, then anyone can.