The Weekend I Didn’t Have Ebola 

I just want to tell you right up front that I didn’t have Ebola. Let’s get that straight. Even if I did, you can keep reading, because Ebola isn’t a prose-borne disease. But that’s irrelevant, because I didn’t have Ebola.

I just had a bad cold. When I started feeling sick Friday morning, 3,439 people had died of Ebola in Africa, and Thomas Eric Duncan was in a Texas hospital. But Ebola didn’t even cross my mind. I’m in the Chicago suburbs, I hadn’t been on a plane in weeks, and no one had tried to vomit around me in a while.

OK, I lied. One of my cats throws up on a regular basis, but he hasn’t been to Africa either.

I went to the doctor in case I had strep throat. It felt like I had swallowed a Christmas ornament, the kind with sequins, and it was rolling around, its sharp edges shredding the back of my throat. My throat felt bigger on the inside than on the outside, and my hair hurt. When my hair hurts, it’s time to get help.

They gave me a form asking about a list of symptoms - nausea, vomiting, diarrhea - and I was puzzled until I realized that they were asking about Ebola. No check marks on that page, thank goodness, but I looked around, wondering how everyone else had answered.

After I saw a physician’s assistant, Crystal came to take my throat culture. She smiled but said, “I hate sticking things down people’s throats, because I hate having it done to me. It makes me gag.” Then she pantomimed throwing up. 

I said, “You might want to wait with that until you finish sticking the swab down the patient’s throat.” 

She laughed. “No, I want you to know it’s alright if you puke on me, because I’d do it myself.” She shoved the swab down my throat, then took it out and said, “That’s not nearly disgusting enough. I’m not done until this is covered in ugly yellow goo. Open up.” Finally, she pronounced the results plenty disgusting and sent me home.

By the time I got up Saturday morning, seventy more people had died of Ebola. But all I could think about was keeping a blanket handy as I alternated between fever and chill. When I tried to stand, I got a headache, but it always took a few seconds to get to me. I could feel the pain arriving. It waited in a little ball in the corner until it saw me getting up, and I could see it coming from the other side of the room. There was a briny goop that had sealed my left eye shut. Apart from that, I felt great.

My instructions said to take industrial strength Sudafed, the kind I could use to cook up a batch of meth if I wanted (I didn’t have that much energy). I took my second pill before dinner, worried that it would keep me up if I took it later.

That didn’t help. By 8:00 AM, those pills had kept me awake for more than 24 hours. I was punchy and could barely lift my arms, but I wasn't sleepy. I kept thinking I’d eventually black out, but it never happened. Instead, I started and finished a novel, read the newspaper, and did the Sunday crossword puzzle, all while my husband slept. Now I had to decide whether to take my next dose. That Christmas ornament was still ripping open my throat, but I needed to sleep sometime. Or maybe I could just take Sudafed twice a day for the rest of my life. That would be great; I could write full-time without having to quit my day job.

I decided to skip the Sudafed, and I called my mom. She asked the two questions she always asks. Had I been to the doctor? Yes. Could she bring me anything? My mom was almost eighty. She lived forty minutes away. She’d had a heart attack, three kinds of cancer, and a brain tumor; she had diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure. If I said, mom, I have a sore throat and I’d love some chicken soup, my doorbell would ring in forty minutes, forty-five if she was out of soup. Even if I told her I’d been throwing up since I got off the plane from Sierra Leone. But I said I was fine and would stay in bed for the rest of the day.

Later I got an email from a friend with an NPR story titled, “No, Seriously, How Contagious Is Ebola?” According to the article, transmission “requires close contact with some bodily fluid containing the virus.” I can’t tell you how much better I felt. And Crystal, who thought it was OK if I threw up on her, should be especially grateful that I only had a cold.

The Sudafed finally petered out Sunday evening, and I slept most of Monday, returning to work Tuesday. By then, there were five US Ebola victims, and we were a day away from the first death in this country. But I was OK, because I only had a cold.