Thursday--many days later!

Thursday: Day two in the red zone or "high risk zone" as it is called. We had a low-key morning until we got our lab results back from Wednesday. We received 5 negative results and were able to discharge 4 of them! One has recovered from Ebola, the other three haven't ever had it. They will return to monitoring for 21 days. The fifth one is a boy who has been symptom-free for two and a half weeks but hadn't yet had a negative blood test. He did today!!! Watching him do a dance of joy was so great!! He will need one more negative test prior to leaving but will hopefully be able to leave Saturday or Sunday. [he did leave Saturday-I wasn't able to post this right away. He promised us he would "dance more than anyone else!" Did he ever!!] sobering though, his return to his home. He has 9 siblings and he watched his dad die in our ETC. :'-(

Four of us went into the high risk zone shortly before lunch Thursday to discharge the patients and check on our pregnant lady. We were in about an hour. We then doffed and changed scrubs and returned to the office where we learned we had 6 patients arriving in the near future; one in the first ambulance, one in the second, and FOUR in the third one. We had been told two of the four were stretcher-bound. We went back into the high risk zone after the first two ambulances, four of us, and triaged the four patients. Thankfully the two "stretcher-bound" were healthy enough to walk with two people assisting; although the one lady we half-carried inside.
We drew blood samples on two of the patients and started an IV then left. By that time we had been in 75 minutes which was brutal for me. I felt okay while inside but felt significantly worse within the hour. I kept downing water. If anyone reading this comes to a West Africa to work--bring a container of powdered Gatorade!!
The staff took good care of me while I felt unwell and I headed back to our housing quarters shortly thereafter, where I continued I re-hydrate then went to bed!!
Woke Friday feeling much better!