Little back story of me. I was shielding since late March 2020. My body as a hobby likes to attack my internal organs, so I need to take medication that suppresses my immune system. They are cleverly names as immunosuppressants. I would die in about 10 years if I didn’t take these medications in a not a fun way. They protect me by lowering my immune system so something that is vital to keep me alive, doesn’t kill me. The unfortunate side effect then is that when I do get bugs, I tend to get them for longer, and often worse than people with normal immune systems. My immune system is not as effective as it could be. This is important note for later as you read. Because of this medication, I am more susceptible to getting bad form of covid. When I say bad, I mean hospital and possibly dying. I am not old. I am barely in my mid-30s. I don’t want to die or spent more time in a hospital than I already need to. I go to outpatient visits every couple of months to two or three clinics. Sometimes more when they want to do extra tests like DXA bone scans. If I get something like a stomach bug or ingest gluten, I end up spending some quality time with an IV. Depending on how quickly I go to hospital, it’s either three-hour visit or 5 days.
I have been lucky that UK did set up priority slots in home grocery deliveries. I got some of the government food parcels as well. Unfortunately, they had some stuff I couldn’t eat like bread, pasta and most meats, as they contain gluten, and I wasn’t in the mood for a hospital visit when the hospitals were overwhelmed with covid patients. We gave away the gluten containing food to others who needed them. Things were very scary for me. No one had any idea how bad things were for people with normal immune system, let alone for immune suppressed people like me. I consider myself very lucky to be able to get food delivered home. It wasn’t on a weekly basis most of the time. In the beginning, we relied on food parcels from Morrison’s and grocery delivery twice a month. For someone like me who needs to eat healthy to have any energy and be able to function like at a half pace, it was tough.
Freedom day was couple of weeks ago. It is terrifying for me and people like me. We had to go to the shops. I needed meds, some vitamin D and some food that didn’t arrive on the grocery delivery. We did a ‘divide and conquer’. I did some shops, and my partner did others. It was the first time I’ve been to Tesco. It was packed and less than half were wearing masks. Some were wearing masks under their chin. Most of the time I was trying to breathe so I wouldn’t have a full-blown panic attack inside the shop. Do you want to know why it was so terrifying for me? People who have immune system like mine, either from medications, cancer or cancer treatments, do not have fully functional immune system. I already mentioned, but this means that we cannot fight infections well and more importantly, we do not make antibodies like people with healthy immune systems. I have been double vaccinated. There is a significant risk, that people like me do not have enough antibodies to protect us from serious covid. We still need to go out and mingle with everyone. We are no longer shielded. We have to go to the office or workplace if they deem us or quit. There is no legal protection for us to stay at home if workplace says no. Also importantly, we do not want things to go back to what it was, into lockdown. We just want to be considered, to be heard. We have no problems with things normalising, as long as people could keep their distance and wear masks. The government deems that hospitals have now enough beds for us, but we don’t want to be in the situation where we have to go to the hospital. Masks are not a perfect solution. But if it helps tiny bit, it is tiny bit more than we had before.
I do not want to be a sacrifice and a number for covid. I want to be able to live after this same as everyone else. So could you please wear a mask?
Katrina writes 