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Decontee Davis, 23, initially thought she had malaria when she came down with a fever. It took her more than a week after she got sick to seek treatment for Ebola.
John W. Poole/NPR
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John W. Poole/NPR
Decontee Davis, 23, initially thought she had malaria when she came down with a fever. It took her more than a week after she got sick to seek treatment for Ebola.
John W. Poole/NPR
Decontee Davis knows how she got Ebola. Her fiance’s aunt was gravely ill with a fever, unable to bathe herself. Decontee helped.
A week later, Decontee and her five-year-old son began to feel sick. They both had a fever, chills and severe headaches.
It felt like malaria. “We went to the drug store for a malaria medicine,” she says. “My son responded to treatment, but I did not.”
Over the next week, her fever worsened. She lost her appetite completely and began vomiting.
Meanwhile, members of her fiance’s family were dying. “We all just got ill in the same time,” Decontee remembers.
The grandson of the woman Decontee had cared for died. Another niece who had bathed the woman died. The son who had buried the woman fell ill.
And Decontee’s fiance had a fever.
More than two weeks after she was exposed to the virus, Decontee went to an Ebola treatment center in Monrovia. Her siblings drove her there.
“I was so afraid to tell my parents,” she says. “[I was] so helpless I could not stand by myself, I had to lie in the hospital yard on the ground.”
There in the hospital yard, Decontee began to vomit blood.
“Everybody was afraid,” she remembers. People were running away from her. “My sister covered my vomit with sand.”
The Ebola treatment center was overcrowded. “They were counting those who were entering,” she says. Although she knew she had Ebola, “I was afraid if I entered I would not survive.”
When she got to the door of the hospital, she was too terrified to enter. “I said I’m not an Ebola patient,” she lied. “I refuse.”
But then a woman arrived in the hospital yard who convinced Decontee to change her mind. The woman had been a patient at the hospital herself and had survived. She had brought her two nieces to get treatment.
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Article source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/10/31/360453236/she-lost-her-fiance-to-ebola-but-found-a-new-mission?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news