Life is a Pre-Existing Condition
Dealing with COVID as an immune-suppressed person.
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Thank you.
It’s hard for the people around me – and even the people who love me – to understand what my life has been like as a person on immunosuppressant medications through a pandemic. I have been on medical isolation since March 9, 2020. I am vaxxed and boosted, but basically my B Cells don’t regenerate, and titer tests after the initial two doses showed no immune response. There is still some likelihood that I had a T Cell response – though I don’t have many of those, either – but regardless, the research currently shows patients like me still have dramatically reduced hospitalization and death rates with vaccination, and it’s still the way to go. Three doses plus a booster is the current recommendation as per the CDC for certain immunocompromised populations**.
I have been pretty much inside my home that whole time except for the medical visits deemed most necessary. The things delayed – I can’t even begin to think about where I was and what was getting started when I had to shut my life down. But I have become more disabled by lack of access to care, likely permanently, and I’ll never know whether the biopsies I finally got over the last few months would have offered different results had they been done as originally scheduled.
All of this while people look to me for commiseration about missing brunch plans, or travel cancellation. Or are eager to tell me about how thinning the herd is helpful in the long run. “Oh! But not you! Of course you don’t count!”
* See Town Hall #7 for the latest:
https://multiplesclerosis.ucsf.edu/patient_and_families/covid_19
** https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/recommendations/immuno.html?
I'm glad you survived. The world needs your graphic diaries and stories. Maybe someday we will all be able to hop off this merry-go-round, and you will be able to write/draw funny, cheerful stories. In the meantime, many thanks for your grace, fortitude and ability to make a picture be worth more than 1000 words.