February 9

February 9, 2015

More slices of life here.

- The Sierra Leonean version of “How are you?” or “How ya doin’?” is “How de body?” (“How’s the body?”). None of that anxious first-world brooding (?). If the body’s good, what’s not to like!

- A woman picking up her pace to get across the road before our car reaches her, carrying a carefully laid out platter of beautiful fruit on her head. If it fell, the whole thing, the fruit and the arrangement of the fruit, would be ruined. Apparently, she knows that it won’t.

I was digestively indisposed last night, having to get up three times to deal with it. Not surprising, in a strange and poor country. But of course the problem is that here, any standard travelers’ GI upset could be Ebola – after all, digestive problems are some of its main symptoms. The key is fever – do you have one or not? If so, you have bought yourself at least a 3-day stay in an isolation unit (apparently very well run by the British government) near Freetown. So the “roll with it” approach I’ve developed to this sort of thing over time when I travel doesn’t really apply. Happily, I did NOT have a fever, and didn’t develop one all day. And in fact the 65 minutes I spent in PPE helping to transfer a very sick (but not with Ebola) patient to the government hospital left me feeling very happy, if tired. So – dodged a bullet this time.

The girl with the pink blanket died last night. She had been getting better; we all expected she would be discharged soon. But then, she apparently had a seizure and died soon after.

We are net 9 patients fewer today – aside from the girl, this is mostly because of discharging people who did not have Ebola.