What Has the Pandemic Done to My Body?

This is ourselves— under pressure.

- Bee Quammie

Throughout the pandemic, one voice has reverberated through the corridors of my mind. My mother, a nurse for 30-plus years—who retired at the end of 2019 and then went right back to work at a COVID19 testing centre in March 2020—has always said “stress will make you sick.” She told me that when I was an anxious child chasing perfection, when I was a new mom chasing perfection and now, during the pandemic (I’ve dropped the perfectionism but still hang on to the stress).

Throughout my life, stress has almost always found a path from the internal to the external: teeth grinding, appetite loss, dizzy spells. Living under the weight of the pandemic for more than a year has been no different for me—or for nearly everyone I’ve spoken with. Here are some ways stress can present itself physically and what to expect when it finally begins to subside.

Sleep issues

I did some informal research on Twitter by asking Canadian women what pandemic stress has done to their bodies. An overwhelming number of people chimed in about the toll it’s taken on their sleep. For many, insomnia became a constant companion. Others started finding they had a very difficult time waking up. Another common response was that their dreams (or nightmares) were extremely vivid and upsetting. Pandemic sleep disruption is so common that neurologists have actually coined a term for it: COVID-somnia.