Survivors

Today was a bittersweet day of celebration at the ETC. Unfortunately, I was on a plane, train, or automobile for R&R and didn't get to participate in person. But I had requested pictures of the event so I could enjoy it from my couch (!) in Barcelona. Today, on his 21st day in our unit, we discharged a cured 4-year-old and his mother. He is our first child under age 5 to survive. And we all fought our hardest for him every one of those 21 days. At Tuesday morning handover, we all gave a little cheer when we heard that the results of his first test were negative. But it was a cautious and short celebration, just in case. A few months ago, we had a 3-year-old get a first negative and die the next day. Today, though, I am sure the drums, singing, and dancing were loud and enthusiastic.

Three weeks ago, this little guy was admitted with his mother, 2-year-old brother, and 5-month-old sister. The father and another sibling had already died of ebola. The baby sister followed shortly after. We were able to be more aggressive with the two boys than we had been for other patients. Unfortunately, we lost the 2-year-old on day 8.

One of the biggest reasons we were able to provide the type of treatment we did was because we have caregivers. These are selfless women who have survived ebola themselves and now work in our ETC. We often have children in our ward who come without a family member, or the family member dies, etc. It is believed that one cannot get ebola a second time (provided we only have one strain here), so the caregivers can stay in the ward without PPE. Many times the caregivers are better at getting the kids to take their meds than we are, so I have on occasion just handed them the bag of pills and watched. Our 4-year-old refused almost all PO meds and food and was terrified of those of us in PPE. It was like wrestling a small alligator to get a line or tube or anything in him. If you managed to get some meds into his mouth, he'd pocket them in his cheeks like a chipmunk. But after 10-12 days of taking nothing by mouth except water, the caregivers were able to get tiny amounts of food into him. If we dropped it off and slowly backed away, making no sudden movements. These women made sure he didn't pull out his IV [too often], changed him, washed him, and held him. They've done the same for quite a few other patients. Many of them have lost their own families to ebola. One of the caregivers is even a survivor of ours. I wonder sometimes what it must be like for her to work in the same tent where she was a patient.

We talk about our patients a lot here. It's not like we all go home to our own separate lives. We go home to our coworkers! I've found that we most often talk about the ones we lost, and it's sometimes harder to remember the names of ones who were negative or cured. It makes me think of a few lines from The Guardian:

J: What's your real number?
B: 22
J: 22? That's not bad. It's not 200, but...
B: 22 is the number of people I lost, Jake. The only number I keep track of.

Today, though...today we celebrate life. A 4-year-old, his mother, and the 9 women who helped take care of them.