February 8, 2015 – A slice of Sierra Leonean life: These
plastic garbage cans with taps on them are EVERYWHERE. They are filled with
0.05% chlorine solution, and you are supposed to wash your hands at them before
entering most businesses. If the business is serious, they also take your
temperature – by pointing something that looks vaguely like a gun at your head.
In fact, it is an infrared, “no-touch” thermometer – who knew?
Another day of exposure to the ETU. Beginning to get a sense
of how the place runs – what’s done in the morning, what at night; how the
teams communicate with each other; what we need to do when we’re in there (a
lot of it is what falls under “nursing care” in the states – clean patients’
bottoms, change their sheets). The training is remarkably well done – at each
stage, we go from being nervous and intimidated to feeling able and being eager
to work. I’m still a bit nervous about evenings and nights (when 2 to 4 of us
are responsible for all the patients – tonight, it’s 31), but otherwise I feel
ready to start.
There was a young pregnant woman in one of the wards today. It wasn’t
even confirmed she had Ebola, but she was certainly very sick. She didn’t
respond (more than to turn her head) when we spoke to her. Midway through the
day, we decided that she would get better care at the maternity hospital in
Freetown, which has an Ebola unit. When the ambulance arrived, seven of us
quickly got into PPE. We got her off of her mattress and onto a stretcher (made
of a body bag) and carried her to a bed outside in the sun, where we washed her
off, front and back, with cold water from a tap (she barely moved when we
poured it on her). Then we carried her to the ambulance to take her to the
city. I don’t know what will happen to her (if she does have Ebola, her baby
will almost certainly die). It reminded me of the JM Coetzee novel “Disgrace,”
and maybe of “The Plague” (though I’m not sure, since I haven’t read it since I
was a teenager). Sometimes, all you can do is what you can do. Not affect fate.
Treat a person with dignity and make her more comfortable as her fate overtakes
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