My Mental Health Took a Bigger Blow Than I Thought
“Mental health…is not a destination, but a process. It’s about how you drive, not where you’re going.” — Noam Shpancer, PhD
A couple of days back, I am reflecting on a conversation from a zoom call. A friend of mine says I look wasted. I say: ‘it is not new”. I am wearing a thick turtle neck sweater during the call. The reality is I have been losing weight since the pandemic began. I noticed it as my clothes were loose-fitting than usual. Then a friend comes to visit me in July 2020 and makes the same comment. She says to me: “Most people I know are piling up weight with sedentary lifestyles, you are losing weight. I would have asked you to let me on the secret but I think something strange might be going on. Get yourself checked.”
So I call my family physician and tell him about the weight loss. He asks if I can quantify the weight loss but I say I have not weighed myself lately. But, I maintain that most of my clothes are ill-fitting. He asks me to do a weight check and then orders a series of tests. He doesn’t find much amiss. He then suggests that my diet might be deficient. He encourages me to eat better. I am at ease but not completely. He orders an abdominal CT scan which I don’t get done due to the existing covid protocols.
We are now in the first quarter of 2021. I lose my dad. This time around, I have figures to back up the weight loss. It turns out I have lost about 10 kilograms which is about 22 pounds. Then I start to worry again. I know I can’t do the CT scan yet and I have a gut feeling the answer is not in the scan. I do some research. Unexplained progressive weight loss can be a feature of psychological stress. Then I remember some of my classes in med school.
The Pandemic, Weight Loss, And Mental Health
I moved into a new apartment in August 2019. My housemate and I did not get along. It was one of those scenarios where you pay for an apartment but you’ll rather spend most of your time elsewhere. I deferred moving out before my lease expired. I should have. The trauma might have had less impact. I got through the first year of the pandemic by;
Applying mental health first aid,
Meditating,
Venting,
Doing online courses; one on mental health and another in clinical research.
When my lease expired, I moved out to friendlier environments. For a couple of months, I was good. I was in a happy place. Yeah, I had some other personal challenges but to me, they paled in comparison to the hell I had been through. One morning, I say to myself: “the only thing constant is change.” In life, there are happy moments and there are sad ones. Ecclesiastes 3:1–4 says:
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal,
After dad’s passing. I spiraled; mentally and physically. With repeated feedback on the weight loss, I reflected. This weight loss had been ongoing for a year. It was not intentional and it was progressive. Since the pandemic began, I had suffered one mental distress or another. Though they were interspaced with good moments, its cumulative effect had taken its toll.
Final Thoughts
Knowing all we know about mental health does not translate to having a grip when life strikes. There is an advantage in having awareness. The next best step is getting help. Help may be in form of self-help or professional help or both. In my case, if the recommendation to do a CT scan comes again, I’ll do it. That way, I can exclude all organic causes and lay some of my worries to rest. At the moment, I am spending some time with family and trying to take it easy. Let’s see how much that arrests the weight loss before another change occurs.
