What it means to be immunosupressed

If you’ve been reading my blog posts and following me on any social media, you know I had a kidney transplant. People know vaguely that I’m immunosuppressed as a result, but I’m realizing more and more that no everyone realizes what that means.

I have a kidney that under normal circumstances would be rejected by my body. It shouldn’t be there, so if my immune system worked normally, it would attack the kidney and get rid of it. As a result, and because I need that kidney to stay alive, I’m given some pretty strong medication that suppresses my immune system. These are drugs with some nasty potential side effects, but necessary to keep the kidney. Those drugs are allowing my new kidney to ‘hide out’ so to speak.

What that also means, is that viruses and infections that enter my body are also not detected by my immune system. My body won’t know that anything is amiss, it won’t launch the attack to get rid of the virus - just like it’s not launching the attack against the kidney. So viruses and bacterial infections can also hide out in my body. Undetected, doing their thing.

That’s why they are so unsafe for me. Because unlike healthy people, I won’t develop the symptoms - at least not in time. That’s why someone like me or elderly people or people with illnesses that reduce their immunity are at risk and why the risk isn’t catching viruses and what not, it’s dying from them. We won’t be able to defend ourselves.

I stay healthy, I look healthy. That’s because I’m careful. I typically have hand sanitizer, lysol wipes and wash up well. I don’t go around touching every door knob I see. I’m careful.

But I also need others to be careful with me. If you have symptoms of flu or anything potentially contagious I need to know. That way I get to decide if I want to take that risk or not. I get up close and personal with people when I massage. It’s hard for me to say no to people when they’re already here. Please give me the choice of seeing you or not if your symptomatic.