if you have a serious illness, an epidemic is terrifying
healthy people are freaking out about the coronavirus. imagine being someone who is already living with a life-threatening illness.
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elisabetta stoinich/getty images
if healthy people are freaking out about the coronavirus, imagine what the headlines are like for someone with a life-threatening illness.
i take a daily chemo drug to manage blood cancer. that means my immune system is “intact,” as my oncologist puts it, but i sometimes worry that my health may not withstand the complications of a serious virus. in the early days after my diagnosis, the threat of a cold or flu was obvious. i turned down party invitations if the host was under the weather (“don’t worry,” one host tried to reassure me, “the last time i vomited was last night”), i was careful about the food i ate (no bulk stuff or cold take-out) and i washed my hands until they were red and raw.
these days i’d describe myself as “germ aware” rather than avoidant. but add in the threat of a potentially deadly global epidemic like the wuhan virus and it’s enough to cause a full-on stomach-churning, breath-taking panic attack.
the virus is on the move. this weekend the first canadian case was reported. so where does that leave those who are vulnerable?
screwed, says a friend of mine who is getting chemo for breast cancer. a public speaking coach, my friend takes the subway to work three times a week and is surrounded by people on the job. the constant doom-and-gloom media coverage of the virus has her worried that she is taking a deadly risk just by leaving her house each day.
worse, she says, “if i die of cancer, that’s legit. to die of the flu? man, that would suck.”
canadian officials are confident that our health system is equipped to deal with the virus. still, when the best advice that the experts have to prevent getting sick in the first place is to wash your hands, it’s easy to feel, well, a lot uneasy. and if you are living with a life-threatening illness like cancer, you know that if you were to develop this mysterious virus, your already compromised immune system will be challenged in extraordinary ways, ways that no one seems to quite understand yet and ways you may not recover from.
so what do we do now?
the only comfort we have is pure hope.
and washing your hands. a lot.
lmachado@postmedia.com
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