I waited on a customer yesterday whose first sentence to me was “I’m having chemo. Can you use the hand sanitizer before ringing me up?” She also needed a kleenex to use the pen I gave her.
On one hand I understand her need to be careful about germs. On the other hand I wonder how long she can insist people sanitize themselves before someone gets irritated with her.
Why would someone get irritated? Seems like its the least someone could do. There’s not a whole big downside to being extra clean, anyway.
Cancer is really, really awful. Much worse than honoring a simple request that could mean the difference between having a horrible, nauseating, pain-filled day in which you do your best to go about your daily business without contemplating your death and suffering a cold on top of that.
For as long as she’s having chemo? Not wanting to get sick when you’re in the midst of chemo and cancer is a very normal response, I think.
Sounds to me like the customer is compulsive about germs. Just being out and around other human beings is going to expose you to a ton of stuff.
Using someone else’s pen? How do you know where it’s been, even if you do use a a tissue. And hand sanitizer , IMHO, isn’t that much of a good thing. Did she touch cash with her bare hands? Ewww!
If she sticks to just asking clerks like you, she should be OK. But sooner or later she’ll have to deal with, and touch, people who are under no obligation to be polite. Then she will have problems.
Sooner, I’d say.
Are you under the impression that persons battling cancer have the luxury of staying home while hired others run their errands, under the impression that all viruses and bacteria are caught via airborne transmission, under the impression that clean hands aren’t a valid precaution against germs, under the impression that those who serve the public are under no obligation to extend courtesy and common sense to their clients, or just entirely unsympathetic by nature?
And if someone gets irritated… so? I expect she’ll have to live with it.
Hm… my own painful death… someone else’s possible brief irritation… I just can’t figure out which is more important to me.
Neutropenia sucks and is no joke, but if she’s in a chemo nadir where she’s most vulnerable to infections, she probably should not venture out into the big dirty world.
And, it’s more than just one day of nausea and pain. That’s pretty much the daily benchmark during treatments. If the go neutropenic, they’re looking at a few days in the hospital to receive many doses of vancomycin and probably a blood transfusion or two.
I would never consider becoming irritated. My first response would be something like “Oh, you poor thing!”
I am assuming that she doesn’t have anyone to go out and run errands for her, and she needs to take care of herself. I don’t blame her for being hyper vigilant when it comes to germs.
My sister had cancer twice, so had chemo twice. Germs and infections were no laughing matter. She got an ingrown toenail the second time she had cancer and the resulting infection spread so fast and so aggressively that she was airlifted to a hospital in a major city to be pumped full of IV antibiotics. If any of us had a cold or anything, we wore masks and didn’t touch her.
Chemotherapy shuts down your immune system and makes you really vulnerable to infections. So being compulsive about germs is completely rational behavior. A normally trivial infection could be lethal.
What kind of asshole gets irritated with someone who is immunocompromised asking them to take completely non-intrusive precautions to avoid making them sick?
I’d certainly honor her request, but I also think if it’s that important, she should be the one providing the hand sanitizer, and should have her own tissues. But it doesn’t seem like a huge deal, to me.
I know too many people who are actively battling cancer, including my SIL who has brain cancer. We love her so much that we’ll stay home from parties if we’re feeling sick, so that she can go and enjoy herself.
I can’t imagine feeling irritated by someone asking me to sanitize my hands prior to interacting with her. Geesh.
I didn’t understand what a bitch it is until my sister underwent chemo. For some stupid reason the doctor took her off the antiviral drug she was on and she promptly broke out in a horribly painful case of shingles on her head. Painkillers barely dulled the pain. I believe I’d be terrified to go out in public with a suppressed immune system.
Wouldn’t she have been safer if she’d worn a mask and gloves? Not saying that I would get irritated at her request, just that she’s really at risk and the mask and gloves would give her much better protection.
A mask would be an excellent idea. I see pictures of people in Japan wearing masks routinely, but it might raise some eyebrows here.
I suspect that the level of sympathy she gets is directly related to whether the people she comes across have had to undergo chemo or know someone who has.
For normal, healthy people, as a general approach to life, that may not be true, according to theories I’ve read. But for someone in delicate health or with a compromised immune system, of course I’d be willing to go out of my way to minimize the risk of spreading germs to them.
Agreed. Since 1 in 4 people will get cancer in their lifetimes, it would probably behoove us all to develop some empathy before it happens to someone we love or one of us.
In this last two weeks, I’ve seen a woman wearing a mask in public. It only registered about as much as someone wearing sunglasses on a cloudy day… sort of “huh?” but I certainly didn’t feel compelled to even stare at her or even wonder why she’d wear a mask. It was at a hay sale and I have trouble being around musty hay, so I kind of thought that it was a good idea instead of breathing in the mold from the older hay at the sale. It never even dawned on me that she might have a bad immune system.
So, if anyone finds themselves in a similar situation… I say wear a mask and if someone asks why, tell them you have a bank robbery scheduled for later on and didn’t want to forget the mask at home.