Taken today after my armpit was sliced & diced

Disclaimer: this blog post is short and a bit of a rant.

Today, I had an abscess on my right armpit lanced and drained at the hospital. After being on antibiotics for 5 days with no improvement, the best course of action to get rid of it and make sure it didn’t come back was to attack it with sharp objects, the first being a needle and second being a scalpel. You may be wondering how I got this abscess (or most likely you just want me to stop making you think about abscesses and pus being drained from them). Unfortunately for me (and you reading this), the abscess is not the only secondary health problem I have dealt with over the years alongside my Ulcerative Colitis.

To treat my UC, I take a number of drugs every day, two of which are immunosuppressants. This means they work to suppress my immune system and try to stop it from attacking my large intestine all the time. The degree to which these drugs are effective at treating my particular case of UC is debatable, however, their effect on the rest of my body is profound. I am on quite high doses of all my medication: 50mg of Mercaptopurine once a day and 40mg of Adalimumab once a week. That is a significant amount of immunosuppressants going into my body on a weekly basis, therefore it should be unsurprising that my immune system is utter garbage.

For 6 years I have been immunocompromised, which is just over half of the 11 years I have been living with UC. During that 6 years I have dealt with countless secondary health problems and complications related to my status as immunocompromised. I get the winter flu vaccine alongside children and the elderly ever single winter. I have had follicular and seborrheic dermatitis on my scalp and hairline, which resulted in my hair falling out in clumps. All four of my ear piercings have been infected on numerous occasions, as well as both of my nostrils. I have had UTIs, skin infections in various places and a particularly nasty incident where I had a form of the oral herpes virus, which presented itself as painful ulcers on the back of my tongue (calm down, I got it after being on a plane and breathing in recycled air). I’ve lost count of the amount of times I have been prescribed antibiotic creams, steroid creams, antibiotic tablets and antiviral tablets. After all this, my immune system is in quite a sorry state.

Not long after I started my Fantasy Masters in September 2018, I developed a large and *extremely* painful abscess under my right arm. Turns out, even shaving your armpits when you are immunocompromised is a risky business. It took two rounds of antibiotics to clear it up (spoiler alert: it came back) and the first round – Flucloxacillin – made my UC Very Unhappy. Fast forward to about a week ago, the abscess was back and just as painful as ever. Not quite as large or as red, but still very much present and irritating. This time, antibiotics did not clear it up as I had hoped. Apparently, nothing is ever straightforward where my health is involved. This led to me having the unpleasant experience of having needles inserted into said *very painful* abscess to try to drain it. When that didn’t work, the scalpel was whipped out and my armpit was sliced open, to try and allow some of the pus to work its way out. Before today I didn’t know what infection smelled like, I now know inside my armpit currently smells like pickled onion (you are welcome for this sensory reading experience). Anywho, I am typing this right now with a hole in my armpit that is leaking into a dressing that I will definitely not enjoy ripping off.

I know I’m a person who complains a lot, particularly about my health. However, I don’t tend to complain about the UC nearly as much as I do about all the other stuff that happens to me. Infections seem like a small deal to people who have less to fear from them than I do. It goes without saying that infections are very dangerous for immunocompromised people like me. This is the reason why I always drink through a straw when I’m not at home, despite cries of “But the environment!”. This is why I always carry around hand sanitiser. This is why I will full-on shout at people who double-dip into sauces. I try to do everything I can to prevent these infections from happening. My UC is difficult to control and periods of remission are infrequent and short. I am *tentatively* in remission right now, but I can’t enjoy it because of my secondary health problems. It doesn’t matter if I feel well and my UC has gone back into the fiery chasm from whence it came remission, there is always something to remind me that I am still chronically ill. I may look and feel like a “normal” person, but in reality, my immune system is struggling to function under the influence of drugs that are not even 100% effective against the problem they’re supposed to be treating. Chronic illness is a delicate balancing act; the wrong amount of medication here or too much/too little there and the wire snaps.

So now that you know about the immunocompromised, what can you do to help? The answer is… practically nothing. Unless you’ve got a cure for UC that means I can come off these immunosuppressants. I highly doubt it. What I will say is this: immunocompromised people are everywhere, most of us look like normal human beings. So don’t shame someone for using a straw. Keep your hands clean. Don’t double dip. Watch where you sneeze. Above all, be understanding, recognise that there are people out there who are less resilient than you through no fault of their own. Whether it’s someone with the sniffles, or someone who’s had their armpit sliced open, be mindful of the suffering of others. And on a personal note from me, take every opportunity you get to denounce anti-vaxxers and stop the spread of their false and dangerous message. Rant over.