'I'm Going to Live': American Ashoka Mukpo on What It's Like to Have Ebola

[LiberalArkie]

https://news.vice.com/article/im-going-to-live-american-ashoka-mukpo-on-what-its-like-to-have-ebola

I'm dreaming that I'm back in Liberia. In the dream, I'm walking around with my camera looking for people I know. But the streets are eerily deserted, and I can't find anyone.

I wake up in a dark room. I wonder if that's what it would feel like to be dead — alone and confused. The beep of the EKG and throb from my neck where medical personnel inserted the IV remind me I'm not dead. I'm at the Nebraska Medical Center; it's mid October and nine days ago, I was diagnosed with Ebola. It's starting to look fairly certain that I will live.

I glance at the clock on the concrete wall opposite my bed: 4am. In two hours they'll come to draw blood from the tubes in my neck so the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) can run tests. Soon, I hope, my blood will come back negative for Ebola, but today I know it will be positive. My head starts to hurt again. I think about Liberia and how lucky I am to be an Ebola survivor. Or is it too early to say that?


<snip>

The jet shudders and whines and roars. Soon many of the Liberian patients at MSF will die and be taken to a funeral pyre by Toe and his team, where their corpses will be burned. I am heading to the United States, where 40 people will work around the clock for a week to save my life. I close my eyes and fall into a deep sleep as Liberia recedes into the distance.

https://news.vice.com/article/im-going-to-live-american-ashoka-mukpo-on-what-its-like-to-have-ebola

[hedgehog]

1. This article answers one question I had about treatment -

"Oral Rehydration Salts (ORS) should be called TLS (Tastes Like Shit). They are bottles of salty, electrolyte-rich saline. If you're not getting intravenous rehydration, the combination of ORS and anti-diarrhea medication is your best bet to keep from dehydrating and dying of organ failure. This is essentially the extent of the treatment most Liberian Ebola patients receive at the overtaxed MSF facility. There are not enough nurses or doctors to put IVs into everyone. I drink ORS like it's the elixir of life."