After our weekend scare, things went pretty much back to
normal. We were out of quarantine,
back to work and all of us thought that the worst was over. I boarded a helicopter on Thursday
morning and headed out to Kenema to visit our OICC there without a care in the
world, besides the normal crushing workload I was managing.
While in the air, I got a text message from a colleague that
I supervise in Freetown telling me that he had gone into an Ebola Treatment
Center for testing. Ebola symptoms
mirror those of a lot of other diseases like malaria and typhoid, so I didn’t find
myself overly concerned. With the
number of cases dropping country-wide and the massive amounts of messages
warning people to avoid touch and be extremely careful, it seemed unlikely that
it could be Ebola. So I put it out
of my mind and went about my work.
On Thursday morning, as I was sitting in a training to
observe staff and give feedback, I received a text message from another
colleague telling me that our colleague was Ebola positive. My heart dropped in my chest and my
mind started racing, trying to think of what contact I had had with him. I shoved my computer into my bag and
left the training to try to find the Area Coordinator for Kenema. I held it together until he closed the
door of his office, and then burst into tears as I explained the situation.
The contact that I had had with this colleague had been very
minimal, with the most extensive contact being when I let him use my phone to
call some staff into work.
However, I was told that I would need to be quarantined, this time for
the full 21 days. It was decided
that it would be best for me to return to Freetown for quarantine since I would
be closer to a treatment center if anything happened and I would have my
friends around. So within the
hour, I was in a car on my way back to Freetown. However, I wasn’t to tell anyone about the situation.
Stigma around Ebola is still a very real issue in Sierra
Leone and is fueled by misconceptions about risk. Ebola, unlike many other diseases, is only contagious when a
person is showing symptoms. I had
no fever and no symptoms, so I was not a danger to anyone. However, we knew that if the details of
why I was returning to Freetown were revealed, the drivers would probably
refuse to take me. So I sat in the
car for the 7 hour journey, texting with everyone back in Freetown and trying to
keep it together.
During the trip, there was a lot of back and forth about
what exactly would happen to me when I arrived. It was finally decided that I would stay in my house, but
move down to an apartment on the ground floor where I could have the space to
myself and be more easily isolated if anything happened. When I did arrive, I spoke with our
company doctor again, who had been speaking with our staff at the Ebola
Treatment Centre. It turned out
that given how limited my contact had been, they didn’t recommend that I be
quarantined, but just that I stay in the ground floor apartment for the 21
days. I would be expected to
monitor my temperature three times a day and promptly report any symptoms.
The situation had thrown everyone into a tailspin as we
tried to trace any contacts of my colleague, so I was busy throughout the
weekend dealing with that.
However, I was relieved that my contact was low enough to not warrant
quarantine. That was the day I
took to calling myself the Queen of Quarantine, as to my knowledge I’m the only
person on staff who had been quarantined twice within the space of one week.
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