I have to say it — 2021 has been one of my least favorite years ever. And I don’t want to appear bitchy or unappreciative, but I have had some rough years in my life, and this one is way ahead in my ranking right now. And guess what? It isn’t over yet. 28 more days to go and I know for sure it can still get uglier and messier. Not even being pessimistic here… just a plain ol’ realist, as I hate to be.
So, if you ever followed my weight loss odyssey up to this point, you have been able to see how I spent two years taking care of my nutrition and my physical activity, and how by this time of year, one year ago, I had already lost a total of 23 kilos and was super excited and determined to lose at least 27 more.
Well, as of last January I started noticing my weight loss process was not working out anymore. Even with a caloric deficit of 900 – 1,100 calories per day not only was I not losing weight, I started gaining it back. Oh, shit. That didn’t make any sense.
I mean, I could have understood if my weight loss process had been halted because that’s something you can always expect when your body gets used to a routine, and then you can try ‘jump starting’ it using whichever tool you have at hand, so my first attempt was changing diets, changing my exercise routine and even my schedule, to keep my body wondering what was going on. Since that didn’t seem to do the trick, I tried getting help from people one would expect to be experts. I went to a couple of bariatric doctors. The first one handed me a pre-existing menu he printed and said I had to stick to that 1,100-calorie diet per day, without paying a lot of attention to my explanation about what really worried me at that point. The second one, seemed to be more understanding, but she gave me at least 8 pills of nutritional supplements I had to take at least three times a day, in addition to suggesting a highly restrictive diet that did not really pay off after four weeks. Even worse — I had an allergic reaction to the 20+ daily pills I had been given and I had to go to a consultation with an allergy doctor to get rid of a nasty rash that kept me scratching day and night.
A couple of months later, I decided to change my approach, so I visited an endocrinologist and here’s where the story gets… let’s say ‘interesting’. I once again chronicled my whole weight loss process up to that point so he would know my background, and even shared the results of some lab work the second bariatric doctored had ordered only to rule out any evident health issues. Everything looked normal, even positive — according to the bariatric doctor, it is not common to have all of your cholesterol levels under control, and I managed to do it. The endocrinologist of course thought more lab work was required, because from his area of expertise, many things could be off. And, guess what? They were.
I am not going to bore you with the story of how I had to have blood tests more than 10 times, then had a CAT scan and eventually how my original endocrinologist found himself confused and not knowing how to proceed because the information didn’t make sense to him. When he admitted he was lost, I thanked him for his job and told him not to feel offended, but I would seek a second opinion from a different doctor, perhaps one with more experience in treating patients of Cushing syndrome/disease, because that’s what we suspected I had. And I do. When I got to my second endocrinologist, he immediately understood the flow of the diagnostic procedure, pinpointed the place where I was, requested three additional tests, and was sure what I had was a pituitary tumor that needed to be surgically removed, and here’s where I stand now, waiting for my next appointment to show him my RM imaging and see what he suggests we do and when we should do it.
On the bright side, I have a very cool set of pictures of my brain, which is something unusual, I would say, so I am at least enjoying having this rare opportunity 🙂
As for the other 1,528 reasons why 2021 has been such an awful year… perhaps they are not even worth being discussed in public, only dealt with, properly processed, worked out at an inner level, buried in the deepest hole I can come accross, burned in a meaningful ritual on the last day of the year, or explored, exploited and considered as a dark place in which I can dwell to justify my becoming an evil villain in the future. Right now there’s no way to know — time will tell. And you? Are you already putting your current year in the balance?
