I’m sorry you got COVID. That is not fun at all. My family is trying to avoid COVID at all costs.

It would be hard to tell now if it was from being immunocompromised or not. COVID cases are the highest they’ve been all year, so I’ve been hearing of a lot of people getting it, especially people who’ve been traveling this summer and not wearing a mask.

I actually never stopped wearing a mask, because it’s important to me not to get COVID and I have Long COVID. My dad has PMR.

Back in 2022 (he still had PMR then), one month after he started PT but was otherwise mostly at home, my whole family got COVID and it was horrible because my mom and I are immunocompromised, even though we took Paxlovid. The funny thing is my dad fared the best, but we suspect it’s because he was getting the most rest. He’s a stroke survivor and my mom are caregivers, so we couldn’t rest.

There aren’t as many people wearing masks, but I live in the Chicago area and one thing I appreciate is that it’s also not strange for me to go out in a mask or see others in masks. I feel if it’s important for someone, whatever the reason to not get COVID and/or other respiratory illnesses, then it totally makes sense to mask up. People have differing and sometimes strong positions on vaccines but of course, that’s an option too though it won’t necessarily prevent infection whereas a mask could. Still, at the point my family was infected, if not for being vaccinated or if it were earlier in the pandemic, we all probably would have landed in the hospital because my mom has a kidney transplant, and my dad had a stroke. Only my mom was hospitalized and that was still frightening. Most of the hospitalizations right now are older and/or immunocompromised people who aren’t up to date on vaccines. Sigh. But as they say, “It’s about your comfort so with individual risk.”