When Plans Go Awry, Xolair Diaries Part II with Serum sickness and Immunosuppression

It’s a beautiful day outside, but I am stuck inside with the stomach flu. This also prevented me from attending a long-awaited reading with Natasha Moni and Hollie Hardy at the Pine Box last night, which made me very sad. Here we are with all these plans, months in the making, and then something as ignominious as stomach flu can get in the way.

Which leads me to a bit of a side post on Xolair. (You can skip this if you are not interested in genetic-modification-related biologic autoimmune drugs and their side effects.) Now, my immunologist/allergist doctor said it had hardly any side effects, that it was super safe, and then I had a fairly severe serum sickness response to it, which he was completely surprised by. I also asked him about whether or not it would make me “immunosuppressed,” in the way that steroids, for instance, or ciclosporine do. Well, not exactly, he said – but the warnings on the Xolair info state that you will be more susceptible to illness (and, incidentally, cancer,) as well as to more severe reactions to illnesses you might catch. If I had read that packet on Xolair more closely, then maybe I wouldn’t have been so surprised when, after finally feeling recovered from the serum sickness reaction, I came down with 101 fever and severe stomach issues – probably a virus caught at another reading event. See, because, I say to myself, I should have known Xolair would make me more susceptible to whatever germs are wafting around, and that this outstanding fever – like 101 right now – is a sign that my body is not as good as fighting things like flu off as usual.

So, resting, missing the sunshine-y, 75-degree outdoors, readings yesterday and meetings with other writers tonight, could possibly make me a little cranky. Instead, I try to think about the things we can and can’t control. I could have controlled getting the Xolair shot, but several doctors thought it was a good risk for me, and I agreed. I could have just not gone outside for several weeks knowing I’d be more compromised than usual immune-system-wise, but that’s not very practical. So what can you do when your plans go awry? Well, I try to see the positive (not passing flu to my dear friends) and get as much work done as possible (one review written under very high fever and stomach flu conditions, see how such things affect the writing of reviews?) and just try not to see it as yet one more sign that the universe is, as they say, against me. You can control some things, but not all. Being a writer is sometimes about making appearances, and I don’t like letting people down because of my health, but it is out of my control. Being a writer is usually a great gig for the health-challenged because, as I have indicated, you can do it even when you’re stuck inside and feeling like crap. You can create, but the part of your job that is performing that creation, well, that part can be a little trickier. You can blame Mercury, or the full moon, or bad luck, or fancy $1500 genetically-modified immuno-drug shots, but sometimes things won’t go our way. And then we have to say to ourselves, we can only do what we can with what we are given.