I'll start by saying that it probably and most definitely MUST feel TERRIBLE!
In my over thinking and for all that we have been hearing about Ebola, I really wondered what it feels like to have the disease. It seems like there really are very few ways to tell from the time of suspected contact to where symptoms develop and it's basically too late. There are a lot of graphics and research as to what is observable externally and measurable, but little from victims about what it FEELS like to they themselves. What thoughts and feelings go through their mind. I'm curious.
I'll preface this by saying my wondering was triggered by paranoia and, as I later came to find out, hormones. A colleague of mine had come from Ghana a few weeks back and I remember joking [which in hind sight is an awful thing to do] that he better be careful he doesn't go touching surfaces at work. When he then said the flight he had taken from Accra had actually come from Monrovia before the unfunniness of my joke became even more so. In my mind this was the beginning of Ebola being in the US. Three weeks later - it was NOT. I read, listened to and watched a lot of articles and reports on the spread of the disease and particularly focused on the symptoms and how they progress by days.
One day I had a headache, another day my shoulder was hurting, then my knees, then I felt an ache in my stomach, then I was feeling really cold ...then hot. I had no appetite and the whites of my eyes appeared to not be so white. All of these things individually and collectively are part of the symptoms, but in my case they had nothing to do with the disease. I hadn't been sleeping much, I did pushups one night (shoulders), rode a bike a few days (knees), PMS (cramps), cranked the AC too high (cold shivers), turned the AC off (hot sweats), just didn't feel like cooking and rest was more important than hunger (no appetite), easily irritable eyes (off white whites). All of those things had nothing to do with each other and at a point I even bought a thermometer to take my own temperature to check myself for fever. Yes my temps were high at points, but not feverish.
I basically worried myself sick. After all this, every woman's monthly visitor arrived and it was explanation for some of what was going on in my mind and with my body.
What this brought me back to is the fact that for most people who were in contact with an infected person not knowing the infected was infected, they could possible go about their days with some of the symptoms developing and be completely oblivious to it. Sans my hormonal and self-inflicted paranoid hypersensitivity they would only realize too late. Three weeks is a very long time and when I thought about all the people I come into contact with through direct interaction (friends and co-workers) and even more indirectly on public transportation - imagine the contagion effect. If I as an individual were infected, for any of the possible 100s of people I come into contact, they wouldn't show signs, but would also come into contact with others. In three weeks, without knowing it and with the freedom to move around Ebola would be and is catastrophic. While it is almost possible to have SOME controls over the movement of people like quarantining, body temperature testing at airports and closing of borders, it is another thing to control animals that are the source.
As of yesterday, the number was at 2,296 deaths. Wow. As if it isn't high enough, the margin of error for that number is so big because even the WHO has said the reality has to be much higher as reporting is challenging and takes a while to aggregate given the nature of the spreading. Some countries don't have the capacity to report quickly enough, while others are trying to deliberately under report (*cough* Nigeria).
It's messy. It's sad. It's ugly. It's contagious.
____________________
*@afropolitaine*
In my over thinking and for all that we have been hearing about Ebola, I really wondered what it feels like to have the disease. It seems like there really are very few ways to tell from the time of suspected contact to where symptoms develop and it's basically too late. There are a lot of graphics and research as to what is observable externally and measurable, but little from victims about what it FEELS like to they themselves. What thoughts and feelings go through their mind. I'm curious.
I'll preface this by saying my wondering was triggered by paranoia and, as I later came to find out, hormones. A colleague of mine had come from Ghana a few weeks back and I remember joking [which in hind sight is an awful thing to do] that he better be careful he doesn't go touching surfaces at work. When he then said the flight he had taken from Accra had actually come from Monrovia before the unfunniness of my joke became even more so. In my mind this was the beginning of Ebola being in the US. Three weeks later - it was NOT. I read, listened to and watched a lot of articles and reports on the spread of the disease and particularly focused on the symptoms and how they progress by days.
One day I had a headache, another day my shoulder was hurting, then my knees, then I felt an ache in my stomach, then I was feeling really cold ...then hot. I had no appetite and the whites of my eyes appeared to not be so white. All of these things individually and collectively are part of the symptoms, but in my case they had nothing to do with the disease. I hadn't been sleeping much, I did pushups one night (shoulders), rode a bike a few days (knees), PMS (cramps), cranked the AC too high (cold shivers), turned the AC off (hot sweats), just didn't feel like cooking and rest was more important than hunger (no appetite), easily irritable eyes (off white whites). All of those things had nothing to do with each other and at a point I even bought a thermometer to take my own temperature to check myself for fever. Yes my temps were high at points, but not feverish.
I basically worried myself sick. After all this, every woman's monthly visitor arrived and it was explanation for some of what was going on in my mind and with my body.
___________________
What this brought me back to is the fact that for most people who were in contact with an infected person not knowing the infected was infected, they could possible go about their days with some of the symptoms developing and be completely oblivious to it. Sans my hormonal and self-inflicted paranoid hypersensitivity they would only realize too late. Three weeks is a very long time and when I thought about all the people I come into contact with through direct interaction (friends and co-workers) and even more indirectly on public transportation - imagine the contagion effect. If I as an individual were infected, for any of the possible 100s of people I come into contact, they wouldn't show signs, but would also come into contact with others. In three weeks, without knowing it and with the freedom to move around Ebola would be and is catastrophic. While it is almost possible to have SOME controls over the movement of people like quarantining, body temperature testing at airports and closing of borders, it is another thing to control animals that are the source.
As of yesterday, the number was at 2,296 deaths. Wow. As if it isn't high enough, the margin of error for that number is so big because even the WHO has said the reality has to be much higher as reporting is challenging and takes a while to aggregate given the nature of the spreading. Some countries don't have the capacity to report quickly enough, while others are trying to deliberately under report (*cough* Nigeria).
It's messy. It's sad. It's ugly. It's contagious.
____________________
*@afropolitaine*
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