Peter passed on early this morning not long after he asked me for water. He was the man with the hiccoughs. None of his relatives could come for his burial, they all live too far away. So he came to the ETU alone and slipped away quietly with no one to say farewell to him. God bless his soul.
It is a joyous day for Christine, on day 22, she turned negative and today she is finally going home. She sat on the white plastic chair attending the devotional service, still with deep lines of sorrow carved onto her young face, an old woman before her time. In her short life, time has been tough and tragic for her; she lost her mother and brother. She has been in the ETU almost as long as I have been in Liberia and has won over many hearts. She was the little girl who climbed out of the bed she shared with her brother, Ryan, when he died. She managed a little sad smile this morning when I held her for the last time.
I hope fervently that time will loosen its harsh grip on her little heart and transforms it from its winter of dark despair to a spring of renewed sense of joy and hope. In time, this too shall pass.
Today ebola took away a life but two more fought long and hard and won their battle.
My PA and I were in the ETU for three hours this morning, there were many patients in both wards, some rather ill. Being encased in full PPE for this period of time somehow did not bother me, perhaps the weather was not as hot but it was still wretchedly humid. We went in so early that I had only a tiny banana to sustain me. Apparently the ambulances went out again in the late afternoon yesterday and returned in the early morning hours with five more patients.
J Godpower, a six-year-old boy has turned sour and started to bleed from his IV site which requires pressure dressing to control. I am intrigued by his surname. Mother Fatu continues with profuse bloody diarrhea, her baby Jackson who is negative for Ebola now is in the Suspected Ward being care for by Comfort, a woman who recovered from Ebola few weeks ago. All the children from the two families that were admitted a few days ago are having symptoms and looking quite ill.
Updated data show a reduction in mortality in the ETU down from 64% to 59% from a few weeks ago.
At the end of the day I donned on PPE again to admit a patient and to move three patients who were positive for Ebola to the confirmed Ward. The ambulances went to fetch three patients at a center run by the district council. When they arrived, one patient had expired and another ran away. The three patients we moved to the Confirmed Ward were Mai, Pai and Alfred K. Andrew who has been in the Confirmed Ward for a spell told me that Mai is his sister.
Ebola does not discriminate.
As we left the ETU after a long day, the full moon shone brightly in the eastern sky rising above the silhouetted shadows of the rubber trees beyond which lies the Leper Colony.
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