The Reality of Being Severely Immunocompromised Amidst a Voluntary Pandemic

“What’s it really like?”

Over the past year of carrying the weight of a rare, aggressive, late-stage cancer at 25, I’ve become accustomed to coexisting with a constant degree of panic.

Now, compound the isolation of your body attacking itself with the politicization of something that could easily and swiftly take you out even before your cancer does.

Before, I was sad. At this point, all I feel is red-hot, fiery anger.

Mandates, masks and vaccinations are not to protect the 99% of healthy people who would (overwhelmingly likely) be fine after a run-in with COVID-19.

They exist to protect weak, sick, immunocompromised members of society. They exist to protect people like me.

To me, “what’s it really like?” translates to: “what’s the experience of your life being up for debate?”

It’s incredibly personal. It is the loss of our humanity, the refusal to protect vulnerable people over our own “personal liberties.” That is, the personal liberties that have supposedly been “hindered” by vaccine mandates since the 1950s. You know, like the vaccines that eradicated polio, measles, tetanus, the list goes on…