Unmasking the Truth
Despite having a progressive disease that is actively working to destroy my body, I am an overall healthy person. I exercise, eat well, don’t smoke and recently stopped drinking. I’m a few pounds more than my ideal, but hey, I’m only human. At the moment, all my systems are holding up well against the rare disorder I was born with.
As I want my systems to stay this way, I recently was forced to reconsider my feelings on mask wearing following the spread of a virulent virus that most assuredly would devastate my fragile biome if given the chance.
My feelings on mask wearing go back 15 years, when I was an extremely ill, 28-year-old stem cell transplant patient. Prior to and during that stem cell transplant I was at ridiculously high risk for contracting any viral, bacterial or fungal infection that crossed my airways. My pill box, a coffee-table book sized plastic box separated into 42 compartments, contained dozens of pills and capsules that protected me from potentially lethal germs. The other thing that protected me was a mask.
As a weakling, post-transplant patient, I accepted the necessity of wearing a mask without question. This did not, however, make it any easier to go into public where the dual accessories of my white, N95-mask and head scarf, which hid my baldness, acted as beacons. Look at me! I’m sick! Stay back! I was avoided in restaurants and at stores. When people stared, which they often did, eye contacted was verboten. As if having a horrible disease and requiring a high risk medical procedure weren’t difficult enough, the mask made me a pariah.
These were the feelings and memories that hit me when the mask recommendation came this spring. The rational part of my brain told me that it was in my own best interest and also the interest of fellow humans to wear the mask. The irrational, post-traumatic part of my brain shrieked NO F-ing WAY!
I understand in my bones how one small piece of cloth can render one vulnerable. The act of covering exposing weakness, frailty and ill-health. In our country, we prize strength. We value vitality and vigor. The youth claim invincibility. To not have this makes you less. Less able, less deserving, less important. When I initially masked up this year, it was as though the decade and a half between transplant and the present had disappeared. I was the same sickling unable to safely bear the world. The physical strength I’ve acquired since then a guise under the mask.
During my first, masked grocery shop, my breathing increased and I started to sweat. My pulsed quickened and I’m sure my blood pressure rose. As angsty and uncomfortable as I was, though, no one stared. People actually made eye contact made with me. They were gazes that seemed to express appreciation, a nonverbal communication of allyship. Weirdly, it was the unmasked who I tried not to stare at. To me, they seem vulnerable and in need of protection.
As more is learned about the benefits of masking to stop the spread of COVID, I’ve grown more comfortable behind my mask. Fear of inadequacy and vulnerability has been replaced by confidence. A conviction has set in, it was never the mask that made me weak. The mask was just a shield, covering me when my body was at its weakest. A weapon in my fight to beat a different, but equally devastating disease.
I am no longer that fragile, post-transplant patient. My immune system is strong and so am I. But all around me others are not. Some have recently been transplanted with another’s stem cells or lungs. Some are comprised by age, weight, lung, heart, endocrine, or any number of other issues that weakens their defenses. While this virus doesn’t care who gets infected, felling both strong and vulnerable, I care. I want for this indiscriminate organism to stop killing people, for the destruction of lives, families and communities to end. It’s such a small thing, to care, to cultivate compassion, to want what’s best for humanity. So I mask up, until it’s safe not to. Together we find ourselves in a common fight that will for some of us be our last. All of us bound together, the strong holding the weak, supporting each other with small pieces of cloth.
