Ebola

spainy17

Is so scary you guys.  I am trying not to worry about it too much but I am.

I work in a large city intensive care unit.  We have a contract with the airport.  If anything happens in our area patient's would be sent to us.  Before having kids I would have felt heroic and honored to take care of the sickest patient's possible and part of me still thinks that is thrilling but after having a family everything has changed.  It isn't about me anymore.  It is about our family and all of my coworkers' families.  It is about the human race as a whole and how difficult it is to contain.  I think of my daughter and the whole situation just freaks me out. 

We have en ebola plan in place now and have been practicing with the equipment and even our most senior nurse accidentally "contaminated" herself when removing protective gear this week in trials.  It is so hard to do everything perfectly in these situations with equipment that we don't use everyday.  Life is so much more important now and I just think about what it would be like if I died or if I brought it home to my family.  Just terrifiying. 

Human error is just too scary.  Ugh.

ohiodoxiemama08

It is so scary and I'm so sorry you have to deal directly with the worry.

I am getting frustrated at the lack of preparation programs out there. My DH is a firefighter/medic and also has the potential to come into direct contact with the virus. He said that other than a few vague e-mails there is so set plan in place.

Hopefully they continue to improve plans and training and praying that you don't have to deal with it at all. These are definitely scary times. Hang in there mama.

bennikki

My sister and BIL are nurses, and they are feeling the same way.  It makes me scared to think, if our health care professionals don't feel prepared, how are we, the general public, supposed to feel?  One of the recently infected nurses got on a plane.  SHE GOT ON A PLANE!!!

spainy17

@ohiodoxiemama08 - I actually feel WORSE for first responders, EMTs, ER workers, etc. because even though we might get the patient's at their sickest they are at least supposed to be identified as Ebola patients before we get them as opposed as coming in contact with them before their disease is identified.  So fricking awful.

@bennikki - we learned today on the news that the nurse even CALLED the CDC before she got on the plane and asked if it was ok for her to fly with a temp of 99.6.  Because it was under the febrile cutoff of 100.4 they said she could fly.  AWFUL.  I feel like anyone who has had contact with a known Ebola patient should be quarantined for the 3 week possible incubation time regardless of whether they are showing any symptoms or not.  As a nurse and a human being I would not have gotten on that plane knowing that I could possibly infect others and my own family but it didn't help that the CDC told her it was ok.  I just get riled up thinking about it.

 

court115

I'm so sorry you have to deal with this directly. It is so scary!! Hopefully the CDC can stop it quickly.

spainy17

Thanks guys. I have always been honored to kind of be on the front lines of this stuff but like I said earlier having a LO really put it in perspective for me and it is just frightening.  It is scary because I know that even in the best circumstances and with all of the right equipment/protocol/etc that there is always human error and that one person can make the difference for everybody in these cases.  I just know how careful we would be if it was an ebola patient and how psycho we would be about washing hands, etc., and to see that 2 nurses were infected so quickly just goes to show how scary this crap is.  I just keep thinking in circles about it all.  ugh.  Makes me want to pack my family in a hole for a year. 

jobiann

I would hate to be on the front lines of this. I'm still thinking positive that we have much higher standards of sanitation then remote areas of Africa, but it's still scary. I'm even more worried one of us will catch influenza...we just had a confirmed case of Influenza A in our local hospital. 

HAND WASHING, HAND WASHING, HAND WASHING!!! 

DCKate

DH is a surgeon and we talked about this last night. He would help of course, but only in a hazmat suit ANd he wouldn't come out of quarantine for at least a month.

Stay safe!

ReeceFamily

I wasn't worried until you guys started posting all of this, haha!   @kittynap, death by car is always the good reminder of how biased our perception of danger is.

ReeceFamily

Also, if Ebola really does hit North America, maybe we can do what the richer people did during the black plague, and we can hole up in someone's castle or estate and tell raunchy stories and drink until it passes.  Anyone want to offer up their castle for all of us?

this decaf life

That would definitely make me a little worried too. We don't have ebola issues here in PI but I definitely use more sanitizer at work lately! I don't handle foreign passports too often but I use a little sanitizer after them especially. Probably isn't really all that helpful and quite unlikely to get it from touching a passport but it makes me feel a little better