Quit freaking out! Just quit. I'm not saying that Ebola is not deadly. Certainly it can be. Guess what else is deadly. THE FLU. THE IN-FLU-FREAKING-ENZA. Now that sh#t will kill you. I promise. I had it back in 2008 when the flu decided to mutate before it made it over to the US, and the flu shot did not cover the mutated strain. I spent about 7 full days in bed. Not joking. I thought I was going to die. I didn't get up to pee for about 4 of those days because there was no fluid left in my body. Every time my fever would spike to 103 or 104 I would just sweat it out. It's really a wonder that I lived, considering the one and only Josh Bailey was my caretaker. He mostly just peeked into the bedroom every 12 hours or so and ask me if I was still alive behind his respirator and HAZMAT suit. I was 24 at the time and reasonably healthy.
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| This person does not have the flu |
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| This pretty much what I looked like with the flu if I had the energy to actually crawl to the bathroom or dress. http://www.hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com |
Every year we see people come in with flu and ultimately die. Mostly the very young and very old, but how about last year when the flu seemed to target people 18-49??? Guess what, some of those people died too. I say all this to say that even though the flu is literally ALL AROUND US every year, we have not talked about it as much in the 12 years I have been in the medical field than we have talked about Ebola over the last 2 weeks.
My absolute favorite is when people claim they don't want a flu shot because...
1. "It gives me the flu"
2. "It makes me sick"
3. "It makes me catch everything all winter"
4. "I never take the flu shot"
Let me just give you a little free medical lesson. When you get the flu shot, a tiny bit of DEAD virus is introduced to your immune system. Once your immune system meets it, it spends the next 2 weeks mass producing a little army that stays alert and ready to fight the virus if it ever sees it. While your body is making that army, it can make you have some MILD flu-like symptoms, Its just because your immune system is working at such a rapid pace. If you think a few days of some body aches are equivalent to having the flu, you are so very wrong. Even the flu mist nasal spray that is a live virus (the part if the virus that allows it to make you sick has been deactivated though) does not really give you the flu. Actually it does a slightly better job of helping you create your army.
Why? Why all the alarmist? Why have 2 cases of Ebola in Texas become such a huge thing?
1. It's News
If this is the first time you have realized that the media likes to take things and blow them out of proportion, you must be dumb or just plain stupid. I honestly don't watch the news much anymore, because I think they are all a bunch of fearmongers. People like watching what is interesting. They are tugging at that fear we all have deep down inside us that some plague-like illness that is going to sweep the globe. Next week it will probably be that the new iphone is so freaking smart it can transmit Cholera over from third world nations. Take the news with a grain of salt. And a lime. And tequila.
2. There is no vaccine or "treatment"
Yikes, that sounds scary. Who wouldn't want to know how to avoid a disease without any treatment or any vaccine available. Have you ever thought about the thousands of viruses out there that we have no vaccine or treatment??? Matter of fact, influenza is one of the very few viruses we have a way to prevent, and you fools won't take the damn vaccine. The human body is designed to fight off these illness. It is just smart like that.
3. The public overestimates their true exposure risk.
Have you all every been in a code blue? Probably not, but let me tell you... They are bloody. And there is usually some vomit going on, in a fountain spewing style. Intubation patients, placing emergency femoral or central lines, inserting foleys and NG tubes and managing dialysis catheters are all very messy procedures. Even if you are fully gowned and gloved, the likelihood of coming into contact with a bodily fluid is high. So general public, let me just say, I doubt that even if you sat next to someone with Ebola on a plane, that you were dropping an NG tube down their esophagus. You probably haven't recently coded anyone in Hobby Lobby that vomited every time you did a chest compression (that actually happened to me once- In Hobby Lobby). Casual contact with individuals (even ones that have been exposed to Ebola), is very unlikely to spread the disease. So just avoid doing any medical procedures on anyone in the grocery store and you should be fine.
4. There are rumors floating around that Ebola is airborne.
Lets do a little math lesson. In addition to that we are going to add in a little common sense lesson as well. Ebola has been discovered in 1989. It has in all likelihood been around longer than that and we just didn't know what it was. If it were able to be transmitted through the air, a hell of alot more people would have it at this point and time. Here is where the math comes in. Think of how many people you come within 6 feet of in a days time??? If it was airborne the number of cases would be rising in an exponential fashion. Think about it, the main reason it is spread so easily in the nations of West Africa is because of there overall lack of appropriate sanitation and clean water supplies. The only two people that have contract the virus in America so far were nurses that were taking care of a dying patient in the ICU. If it was airborne, why did everyone that came into contact with that man have it by now? (including all the of the people that were taking care of him because they even found out he had Ebola) I seriously doubt that the ER and EMS personnel that helped that poor man had much on other than (maybe) gloves. Its not airborne. Chill out.
5. Sometimes the health care providers are just as clueless as the general public
I dont say that to make you lose faith in Nurses, Doctors, PAs, NPs, etc, but it is the honest true. I think that everyone would like to think that hospitals are made of highly skilled individuals that are fully prepared for every medical emergency scenario that might come there way. The same way that I like to think that the flight crews on commercial jets would be cool, calm, and collected if I was every on a plane that was going down. The truth of the matter is that sometimes when the sh$t gets real, we are just human beings too. We get scared. We make mistakes. We really don't know what to do when something like this happens. I'll give you $100 if any of the hospitals I have ever worked in could have properly handled an Ebola patient 100% of the time. For the most part, I think that now if someone hit the ER with ebola, the majority of the hospital would go all Mary Katherine Gallagher start sniffing there armpits in the corner. (me included). We certainly wouldn't calmly just proceed with the outlined protocol. You have read the nurses accounts from the Texas hospital. THERE WAS NO PROTOCOL. If there was, they didn't know it. So is really a protocol if the people that are supposed to be implementing it don't know what it is?
Get out of the corner. Quit rocking back and forth and sniffing your pits. Its gonna be okay. Ebola is definitely a serious disease. Just like AIDS or HIV. Matter of fact, there is enough people out there living with those diseases that odds are you have probably either touched or touched something that a an AIDs or HIV patient has touched in the last month. Lets all just quit fueling this media frenzy and calm down.
Some of my coworkers so tactfully taped a picture of a ostrich with its head in the sand to my desk the other day. Keep in mind these are the same people that also hid on open packet of sardines behind my computer monitor, so their reliability is questionable. I dont think my head is in the sand. I am just trying to be realistic about this situation. I have finally been able to accept in my 30 years on this planet that I can not waste my energy worrying about things I can not do anything about.
So make it stop people. All of it. Quite freaking out about Ebola and for heaven's sake get your flu shots! Me and the CDC will both thank you!