COVID-19 sparks fear in immunocompromised individuals

COVID-19 took the world and flipped it on its head. The world grieved the loss of get-togethers with friends, eating at restaurants and going shopping while immunocompromised people like my mother were grieving the loss of their assured safety.

 

Mom is an immunocompromised lupus survivor.

“When you’re fighting another disease on top of a disease or virus, it’s double hard on the body,” my mother, Debbie Rudderham, said.

But she wasn’t only grieving loss of safety, but also the loss of her mother – alone.

Because of social distancing measures and heavy restrictions worldwide, Mom spent two weeks alone with her mother in the Palliative Care unit at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital in Sydney, Nova Scotia. It wasn’t until her mother’s last day that she was allowed one more person as a support system. Her mother died of cancer with no funeral or visitation in the foreseeable future.

Mom’s compromised immune system makes her more susceptible to the virus and it would be more severe if she were to catch it.

Similarly, the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic infected thousands and killed 428 individuals in Canada. Mom caught the “swine flu” and said she could barely lift her head off the pillow.

“I thought I was dying. And I’m afraid for myself, if I get this [COVID-19,] that I’ll feel the same way. I didn’t think I was ever going to survive that [H1N1,]” she said.

Mom’s immune system hit an all-time low when infected with H1N1 in 2009, but she recovered. She fears that if infected with COVID-19, her mortality rate would be similar to the rate of an older adult. The current COVID-19 death rate for someone above the age of 80 is 21.9 per cent for confirmed cases.

While Mom spent two weeks with her mother in hospital, there were two COVID-19 related deaths at the same hospital.

“I’m scared for my friends and family because I don’t want them to get sick,” my nana said.

Mom’s mother, brother-in-law, I and other extended family members have illnesses or take medication that suppresses their immune systems.

On top of Mom’s worry about herself and her family getting sick, she’s also worried about the supply of her main medication, hydroxychloroquine sulfate, running out.

“Hydroxychloroquine keeps me in remission,” she said.

This medication was hailed by United States President, Donald Trump, as being “a game changer” after it surfaced that the medication might help treat COVID-19 symptoms.

He said, “what do you have to lose? Take it,”

There’s since been tests conducted proving hydroxychloroquine sulfate will do more harm than good for COVID-19 patients as it might cause heart problems or weaken your immune system.

Without her lupus medication, she would be unable to function.

Fearing the loss of her medication is only one fear; Rudderham also fears going to the store to get groceries or leaving her house.

“I try to stay away from people, but I find it hard when there are other people who are not abiding by the social distancing … I get very anxious,” she said.

She urges everyone to think outside of their own bubble when deciding to leave the house for unessential trips.

“It does bother me to know that there are people out there who are very healthy … [and] they’re not taking into consideration … what someone else right next to them is fighting.”

This piece is dedicated to my grandmother Alice Gillis who died peacefully on Monday (April 13.)