@monica19815 Welcome to Mayo Clinic Connect! You've picked a great topic for your first post here on this forum!

I am an active blood cancer patient, undergoing chemotherapy, and a dialysis patient. As you stated, I have been wearing a mask since before COVID, and consider my immune system to be severely compromised. I try to educate people when possible, about the why of wearing a mask. So many times they don't really hear the message, instead saying, "oh, I'm so sorry you have that". But at least I hopefully passed on the education, at some level.

Yesterday I was at a small meeting, in a small room. There were 7 of us. I was the only one masked, and everyone there knew my health situation. Imagine my frustration and sense of "really??? what were you thinking???" when I found out later that the one person who gave me a big long hug after the meeting, has been dealing with a two week case of the flu [who knows what it really might be!?]. If I had known that I certainly wouldn't have let her hug me!
Ginger