I would have been dead in a week

摘要

You volunteered to go to Sierra Leone to care for patients in the Ebola Treatment Unit in Kenema. Why did you do that? My motives were mixed. Certainly, I was well-trained for the task, I was in Africa already, working in Uganda when I heard of the unfolding tragedy, and I wanted to go help. I was born in Africa, though I'm a naturalised American citizen, so I'd say there was also an emotional component to it. But I will say that when I decided that I should go, my ideas about what it would entail were quite naive and abstract. What was day-to-day life in the Ebola unit like? By definition, it is a difficult work environment. About half of your patients die, and the virus kills at a very aggressive, dignity-robbing pace. In most clinical settings, fatality rates far lower than those you find in the Ebola unit would be considered completely unacceptable. Caring for these patients while so many suffer and die is very hard. You may be at the bedside of a patient who has just died and then have to turn immediately to another bedside, to another patient who needs you. And then turn and do that again and again and again. It takes a toll on the head and the heart - but not turning is never an option.