Over the course of the seven months that we were
there, four teams of officers were created
consisting of about 70 to 80 officers on each team.
And one of the challenges was to get to know one
another, build trust, understand one another's
capabilities and competencies leading up to
the training and deployment so that we
would be best prepared to accomplish the mission.
Every aspect of this mission was historic in
some sense for the Public Health Service.
And I think one of the most unique things about
this mission was that every officer who deployed
wanted to be there, despite the risks, despite
the danger, despite the unknown and being away
from family.
The mission of Team 1 was to open and operate the
Monrovia Medical Unit, which was a 25-bed
healthcare facility to treat people infected with
the Ebola viral disease that were healthcare
workers, either Liberian nationals or
internationals that were going to be working with
nongovernmental organizations to stem the
tide of the Ebola epidemic.
And, as President Obama called us, we were hope
multipliers, because just having that facility
available gave people that security that if they were
a healthcare worker that was risking their life,
that they would be treated in a more Western facility
with some Western therapies and would have a
chance of survival.
The attitude about your job was that you did
whatever needed to be done, whatever you saw
needed to be done, you did it, whatever you were
asked to do, you did it.
So, if there was trash to be emptied, you just
emptied the trash.
Whoever saw the trash first emptied it, and
sometimes it was almost like a contest.
We were all consummate professionals.
The last day before we left, we had a banquet and
I said I'd never been a part of a group like that,
that was that large and everybody pulled their
weight, there was not one slacker, there was not one
dullard, there wasn't one lazy person or
intransigent person, everybody pulled together,
got along, did their jobs, it was magical.
Team one, they physically designed the hospital and
got it up and running.
Our mission was to continue building on their
hard work, and not to try to make modifications and
changes where it wasn't necessary.
So, our team motto was building on excellence.
Our mission was to take care of health care
providers.
And healthcare providers was kind of a loose term
in a sense that the mission in Ebola Treatment
Units, what we call ETU's, is you need all kinds of
people to care for, not just the clinicians.
You need the boot scrubbers, the people who
are washing the laundry, the Ebola positive
laundry, the Ebola positive boots.
Because even though you get deconned and you're
physically in your PPE, there is still a potential
that you're carrier Ebola out.
So, those workers are still at very high risk at
contracting Ebola.
So we would have clinicians, we would have
physicians, we would have nurses, we would boot
scrubbers, we would have admin people, because
admin people, they might not physically be going in
to provide direct nursing care or physician care,
but they might be trying to complete a survey that
needs to be done for the Ministry of Health.
The first time in the Ebola ward was very
emotional for me because I couldn't believe I was
there, I was afforded an opportunity to give back,
to give back what has been given to me.
When I approached the patient in the ward it was
like very natural.
I didn't expect it to be like that.
Even with a PPE on.
It was natural to care and to comfort and to reach
out to them and to make them feel better, make
them feel that they matter, that they're still
human even though they had Ebola.
Whenever we entered in the ward they were so lonely,
they were so grateful to see a human being in the
room, so they wanted to see us and they couldn't
take their eyes off of us and they didn't want us to
leave,.
So they were happy that we were there.
The mission of Team Three was to continue managing
the Monrovia Medical Unit and providing care.
When we arrived, we actually had two Ebola
patients there already, so we kind of picked up right
from the get go of staffing and managing the
unit.
Every officer's job on the team was equally
important, regardless of whether you were a
provider going back and caring for the patients
that we had in the treatment unit, regardless
of whether you were a safety officer that was
spraying down your teammates or spraying down
surfaces inside the high risk area.
We could not accomplish that mission without
logistics, without people ensuring that we had the
protective equipment that we needed to function in
that environment.
We could not function without our planning
people that were reporting our accomplishments on a
daily basis to our command element within the country
and back home.
We could not accomplish the mission without our
administrative folks that were maintaining personnel
accountability and making sure that the officers
that we had on the team were well and were
accounted for over the time that we were there.
Everybody that contributed to that mission
regardless, of the job they did, saved lives.
The training that we went through prior to
leaving for Liberia was eye opening.
We're all fairly good at our jobs and in terms of
promoting and protecting Public Health.
We generally have a good sense of things.
But the training was incredible in trying to
put us in that Ebola Treatment Unit scenario.
It was an eye opener ,and they had dummies there
with moulage to demonstrate blood and
fecal matter and vomitus and for us to be in the
personal protective gear and having to move around
and the trainers are just on us and sometimes we
thought it was overkill.
There were times that we had the audacity to say
that's not how it's going to be!
Now who are we to say that's not how it's not
going to be like?
Like you did, who else has worked in Ebola treatment
unit?
And then we went to Liberia and then we
stepped across that line between the clean side to
the hot zone.
And it was the realization like, man, am I glad I
paid attention in Atlanta at that CDC course because
it saved my butt.
It honed me and it tempered my zeal.
It just offered clarity.
We had one survivor.
Her name was Marphan.
It was a very sad story.
She lost two brothers to Ebola.
Both of those brothers were in the ETU, and she
made it out.
She became almost like a symbol of success for us.
And I remember her being at our change of command
ceremony when we transitioned from Team
Three to Team Four and I don't think anybody on
Team Three will ever forget her name.
The MMU had a wall to commemorate the survivors
that made it out of the unit.
And it was blue with yellow handprints, one for
each survivor that made it out.
It was very poignant.
And when it came time she walked over and I had the
bucket held out and she put on the glove and put
her hand in this shallow bucket and placed her
handprint on the wall.
It was a signifying moment for her surviving this
extremely deadly disease.
One of the special things that Team One left behind
was a Monrovia Medical Unit mural.
And it's a mural in the sense that it was drawn on
a sheet, and it's the outline of the MMU with
stars above it.
And the stars represent each of the patients that
were admitted to the Monrovia Medical Unit.
And the special thing about those stars is that
if they have a yellow halo, those are patients
that we lost.
So one of the nice things that we did and to help
officers cope with the loss of our patient was we
had a service, and then we all quietly walked by this
mural in the command tent and paid our respectd to
all those survivors as well as those patients
that we had lost.
The last couple of days of our deployment, I felt
like I was sort of in denial because I did not
want to leave.
It's so hard to believe that one can adapt and can
make a living and adopt a new way of living in a
foreign land with people that you had never met
before in your life.
It became part of me, it became part of my life.
And so the idea of having to plan a transition plan
for Team Four was in a way difficult because it made
us realize that soon we had to come home.
But at the same time you're thinking, but this
is home, this is where I've lived day in and day
out, you know, the last 40 days.
It was difficult to leave a job that was yours, to
leave a job that had so much meaning, to leave a
job that had become part of you.
Team Four's mission was to train the Ministry of
Health but also to close the MMU and leave.
The idea was - after we trained their personnel to
operate our hospital, we would leave the hospital
behind for them.
Just as we transitioned with Team Three, we were
going to transition Ministry of Health into
basically Team Five.
But that is not how it happened.
Ministry of Health decided that they didn't want the
facility so we, we shifted gears.
We went from giving them our entire operating
hospital to simply packing everything into boxes for
them to ship the material off to other hospitals.
Team 4 had a unique opportunity and a humbling
privilege to be the last team to leave the MMU, and
we knew that we were representing all the other
teams.
While we were eager to go home and return to our
families, the MMU had become a home away from
home and our team members have become our new
family.
So it was a bittersweet moment when it was time to
leave.
The night before I came home, to help myself
emotionally with everything that I
experienced and to get myself prepared to come
home, I wrote a poem: West Africa, hot, and
humid, Broken to her knees.
Fever, pain, Fear of the unknown, and of the known.
Death, death all around.
World love, kindness shining bright on her.
Bringing gentle hands and loving hearts.
West Africa, hot, and humid, rising above the
pain.
Each day filled with hope and determination.
Good-bye, good-bye Ebola, release your grip and we
bid you farewell.