Opinions from Life Experience

Warning: Hot sports opinion coming up.

The last couple months have been new and challenging for the world. And, as time marches on, we face new challenges in trying to get life back on track. Two and a half to three months ago everybody started using phrases such as “social distancing”, “safer at home”, “flattening the curve” and “immunocompromised”. At the beginning of all this it was scary and we were in the “fog of war”. We didn’t know much other than we should be very afraid. The world shut down. But then an amazing thing happened… people came together. For many people, their neighbors became an essential part of their lives. We went from a world where we pulled our cars into our garages and quickly closed the garage door before we even got out of the vehicle to a world where people would get out of the house and go on walks and would smile and talk from the other side of the street. Kindness abounded. People looked out for each other. Communities grew. And then as time went on things have increasingly become political and emotionally volatile and angry and opinionated. It’s now “you don’t care about other humans if you don’t wear a mask” vs “It’s my freedom to not wear a mask”. It’s “we need to open everything back up” vs “we should still be terrified and stay at home”. It’s “protect the immunocompromised at all costs” vs.”people need freedom to live life”. It’s become an argument.

Like everyone else on the planet, I have opinions. And that’s a good thing. I like to listen to people with differing opinions because I might just learn something. One thing I have learned in life and feel that we would all do better to learn is that I/we don’t know it all and I/we can actually be wrong. Shocker. I know.

Opinion can be based on many different things. What we read. What other people say. What we see on the news. What we read online. How we were taught as we grew up. But, one of the most powerful ways to form an opinion is hard core life experience. If you don’t have life experience regarding an issue, it would be wise to talk to someone who does. For example, many people have strong opinions on raising kids. They feel they know exactly how to do it and are often quick to point out how others are doing it wrong….the problem is many of the strongest opinions on child rearing come from people who don’t have children. And then God with His fabulous sense of humor places those precious little rascals in their lives and they realize….we actually know nothing about raising kids, we are not as smart as we thought we were, maybe that lady who gives her kid candy is not a horrible mother…. and we experience it for ourselves and we learn.

I have a life experience that I would like people to consider during such a time as this. I am not currently immunocompromised but I was from August 2018-February 2020. During that time I was forced to become a warrior…. kicking breast cancer’s ass. I went through chemo and radiation and surgeries and I still have more surgeries to go. During that time my white blood count tanked hard-core. Life had to suddenly change. I didn’t have a phrase for what my family and I had to do, but basically we naturally started social distancing.

I gave air hugs before air hugs were cool, y’all.

I even hugged my precious little carrier monkey nephews with my legs so they could hug me but didn’t wrap them up in the big huge hugs I was desperately wanting to give them…because….you know…boogers and cooties. I even hugged my kids less especially if they were not feeling well (this shredded my heart). I wore masks sometimes. We washed our hands a lot. We used Lysol. I took/take supplements to boost my immune system. Yes the flu and colds came into our home. And we dealt with by distancing even more at home. We did all the things that other healthy humans have had to learn how to do over the past 2 months. I reduced my contact with the outside world to a few chosen places and people. My family and very close friends and I did what we needed to do to keep me safe.

But, I never asked the rest of the world to stop. I never even thought about it.

I never thought of asking my kid’s schools to shut down so my kids wouldn’t get sick from other kids. I did ask my kids not to drink out of the public water fountains and made sure they had water bottles. I did ask my kids to wash their hands immediately when they walked in the door from school.

I never thought of asking the airlines to shut down so my husband wouldn’t get sick from other passengers. I did ask my husband to wear a mask and/or move to another seat if he was sitting next to Snotty McSnotterson on his airplane ride home from a work trip. I never asked him to ask the person next to him to wear a mask.

I never thought of asking my church or my community or our parks or the stores or my little town or the city of Denver or the state of Colorado or the United States to shut down to keep me from catching the flu and colds and the stomach virus and all the other viruses that travel quickly from person to person.

Yes, watching the world move on around me was hard. It’s lonely even when you do have as many amazing friends who checked in on me and brought us food and came with me to chemo. It’s hard when your life suddenly changes and you can’t do all the things that you want to do and other people can do those things. It’s hard when you are used to being an incredibly healthy person and suddenly you are “the sick one”, “the bald one”, “the one with cancer”, “the immunocompromised one”.

And it was amazing to me how little I actually knew about how many people live immunocompromised lives and what those lives look like. I just had no idea. I had no clue what it really meant to have to be careful. But I didn’t have the experience for myself so why would I have known?

And now, here we are. In the world of COVI19. And for the first time, almost the entire planet has been given the gift of understanding and experience of what it is to have to live like a person who is immunocompromised.

But now we are arguing over it.

So here’s my two cents worth from my chemo brained experience.

We started social distancing and wearing masks and quarantine and and and and…..to flatten the curve. And we have done that. Yes, we might have a second wave but no one knows what the future holds. More and more studies and research are coming out every day. Last week it sounded like you could get COVID from a shopping cart that someone touched 3 weeks ago and this week now the CDC says it doesn’t spread that way. Hindsight it 20/20….usually because we get more info as time goes on. It doesn’t always mean there is some huge conspiracy. That might be true, but more often than not we just need time to learn more about what we are dealing with and how to fight it and win.

So here I go….I’m putting myself out there. Be kind. My opinion is based on my own experience. Yes, you can disagree with me but no you have no right to tell me that my experience is wrong and I don’t know what I am talking about. The majority of people I have known in my life have never ever been immunocompromised. I have. The world did not stop for me when I was immunocompromised. I never expected it to. My world changed. The people who were closest to me made changes because they love me. But never in my wildest dreams would I have ever asked everyone else in the world to stop because my life changed.

Would it have made a difference? What I mean is, would I have been less sick if everyone around me stopped living their lives to protect mine? No, I don’t think it would have. My family and close friends and I did what we could to keep me as healthy as I could be. However, I also chose not to live in fear because if I got sick and died….well, I know this fella named Jesus and I have His peace and His hope.

(Side note, if you are scared and don’t know Him, I would love to introduce you to Him. He’s amazing and not at all like many church folks trapped in Pharisee-like legalism make Him sound. He’s all about love and joy and peace and freedom. He’s not a cosmic kill-joy. I lived in fear for a long time. Not any more. Freedom from Heaven baby….it’s amazing).

You can die a lot of other ways before you actually die physically. I chose to live while immunocompromised and continue to choose to live the one life I have been gifted.

So…….No, I don’t think everyone should be forced to wear masks to protect the immunocompromised. But yes, I do think we need to be more aware of actually how many people in our world are immunocompromised. Yes we can be loving and helpful and caring and serving to these who need our help. Yes we can choose to not judge people who wear masks. They may not be scared at all but may love someone who is immunocompromised. Yes we can choose to not judge people who don’t wear masks. They may be claustrophobic or don’t want to wear one because no one they love is in the at risk group. Yes, we have to have empathy because now we have had a little couple month glimpse into their lives. It sucks. And now we all know it and can relate a little.

No, I don’t think everything should remain shutdown. There are too many other bad side effects from health to emotion to economical to many other things that will creep up on us if we stay locked away.

There are so many sides to this debate. Some people are scared. Some people are angry. My prayer however is that we can have our opinions but be able and willing to listen calmly to others. My prayer is that we can not jump down the throat of or give the stink eye to someone not wearing their mask at Home Depot. My prayer is that we make sure and research random videos and articles on both sides of the argument to make sure there is true validity to them before we post them and start a fire storm of idiotic social media fighting. My prayer is that we can stop being angry and crazy and hateful toward people who don’t share our same opinions. My prayer is that we can use our new experience of the last two months to love each other more.

It’s all about love y’all.

And for the love of all that is glittery and pure…..wash your damn hands! 🙂