Westborough Family Raises Awareness of Immune System Disorders

A blood drive this Wednesday in Westborough also will have information about the students' condition.

The Rastads each have primary immunodeficiencies, which are life-threatening disorders that affect their immune system, requiring them to have blood product infusions, according to their mother, Towma.

"They don't have the ability to fight off infection," she said.

"If you or I get sick with a cold, your immune system pops up and you can fight off the infection. With them, if they get a cold, it manifests into other things. A cold ends up being a sinus infection, which ends up being pneumonia, which ends up being something worse because their immune system just doesn't work."

A blood drive from 2 to 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Westborough Senior Center will include an information table, "so people can educate themselves," she said.

The family also will be there to thank donors and workers.

"Without the blood product, they wouldn't be here. That's why the blood product is so incredibly important,” Mrs. Rastad said.

This fifth annual drive will be the family's latest work promoting awareness of such health care issues.

This summer, in Washington, D.C., the students told legislators "why the plasma's important to them," she said.

Alec, a WHS junior, was diagnosed at birth. "He was extremely ill, with all different kinds of infections.”

Allissa, a WHS freshman, was diagnosed "about three years ago,” Mrs. Rastad said. 

Allissa had been sick with "lots of upper respiratory, sinus infections that wouldn't go away,” she said.

"They call it 'common variable,' because it's different in each person. Most people it affects, actually, in their second and third decade of life. So, you have lots of children who are really, really sick, but they don't realize what they're sick from. And either they die before they figure it out. Or, once they figure it out, then they start plasma infusions,” Mrs. Rastad said.Alec "missed most of his freshman year" and "missed probably 80 percent of his sophomore year,” she said.

And for Allissa, "the infusions have greatly improved her quality of life. She does everything that a normal kid would do,” Mrs. Rastad said.

"I like to think that they can live relatively normal lives,” she said.

"We worry a lot, because the exposure risk is there. So, if there's something communicable out there, like, say, the swine flu, then they're home bound. The flu, chicken pox, things like that can be fatal."