1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:01,410 2 00:00:01,410 --> 00:00:08,600 The first person I ever met with Ebola was a boy named James. 3 00:00:08,600 --> 00:00:09,620 He was five years old. 4 00:00:09,620 --> 00:00:13,200 And he had a red fire truck that he played with. 5 00:00:13,200 --> 00:00:16,810 And he looked completely normal. 6 00:00:16,810 --> 00:00:19,860 And that scared me to death. 7 00:00:19,860 --> 00:00:20,720 He despised me. 8 00:00:20,720 --> 00:00:23,510 And he despised my team of nurses, physicians, 9 00:00:23,510 --> 00:00:25,910 social workers, nutritionists, cleaners 10 00:00:25,910 --> 00:00:30,610 who had gone to Sierra Leone to treat patients with Ebola. 11 00:00:30,610 --> 00:00:34,330 He hated us because we wore these white and yellow suits, 12 00:00:34,330 --> 00:00:36,910 zipped up, sealed up, where the only humanity that you 13 00:00:36,910 --> 00:00:41,260 could see were our eyes behind a plastic face shield. 14 00:00:41,260 --> 00:00:44,014 Inside of the suits, it was like being in a veritable sauna. 15 00:00:44,014 --> 00:00:45,430 The temperature inside of the suit 16 00:00:45,430 --> 00:00:48,490 was between 110 and 130 degrees. 17 00:00:48,490 --> 00:00:52,480 So as soon as we put them on, our face masks fogged up. 18 00:00:52,480 --> 00:00:58,130 And we were walking, stumbling, through the fog of Ebola. 19 00:00:58,130 --> 00:01:02,090 My job was to stick James with needles, to hydrate him, 20 00:01:02,090 --> 00:01:04,730 and to try to save his life. 21 00:01:04,730 --> 00:01:07,470 Now, when I was preparing to go work with Ebola patients, 22 00:01:07,470 --> 00:01:08,490 I was reading the media. 23 00:01:08,490 --> 00:01:11,420 I read Richard Preston's Hot Zone, great work of fiction, 24 00:01:11,420 --> 00:01:12,470 by the way. 25 00:01:12,470 --> 00:01:16,010 And I was scared to death of the blood and the dying. 26 00:01:16,010 --> 00:01:19,100 This was zombie apocalypse, according to the media. 27 00:01:19,100 --> 00:01:23,250 And so when I saw James and he looked completely normal, 28 00:01:23,250 --> 00:01:25,070 I didn't know how to respond. 29 00:01:25,070 --> 00:01:28,730 This kid had the world's worst virus inside of him. 30 00:01:28,730 --> 00:01:31,040 And he just glowered at me as I tried 31 00:01:31,040 --> 00:01:33,610 to stick him with a needle. 32 00:01:33,610 --> 00:01:38,620 About a week later, on January 1st 2015, I met Isatu. 33 00:01:38,620 --> 00:01:40,030 Isatu two was three years old. 34 00:01:40,030 --> 00:01:42,809 And she did not look normal. 35 00:01:42,809 --> 00:01:44,600 She came to us in the back of an ambulance. 36 00:01:44,600 --> 00:01:46,630 We sprayed down the doors of the ambulance. 37 00:01:46,630 --> 00:01:48,670 And we were in our white scary suits. 38 00:01:48,670 --> 00:01:49,900 So we open the door. 39 00:01:49,900 --> 00:01:51,670 And laying on the floor of the ambulance 40 00:01:51,670 --> 00:01:55,330 was this three-year-old child all by herself, barely 41 00:01:55,330 --> 00:01:56,780 breathing. 42 00:01:56,780 --> 00:01:58,750 She was covered in diarrhea. 43 00:01:58,750 --> 00:02:00,700 She was covered in vomit. 44 00:02:00,700 --> 00:02:03,670 I didn't think she was going to live longer than the time it 45 00:02:03,670 --> 00:02:07,130 would take to triage her and get her into our unit 46 00:02:07,130 --> 00:02:10,490 because our new normal, working in the Ebola crisis, 47 00:02:10,490 --> 00:02:15,445 was the fact that, for children under five, only 20% survived. 48 00:02:15,445 --> 00:02:19,190 49 00:02:19,190 --> 00:02:24,490 Of every 10 children we treated, 8 died. 50 00:02:24,490 --> 00:02:26,542 So when we saw Isatu, we had no hope. 51 00:02:26,542 --> 00:02:28,000 We pulled her out of the ambulance. 52 00:02:28,000 --> 00:02:30,010 And our team of physicians and nurses 53 00:02:30,010 --> 00:02:32,152 worked with her to try to start hydrating her. 54 00:02:32,152 --> 00:02:33,610 And in the moment that I pulled out 55 00:02:33,610 --> 00:02:38,800 the IV to start the line on her, I had a dose of hope. 56 00:02:38,800 --> 00:02:40,250 You know why? 57 00:02:40,250 --> 00:02:43,270 Because she kicked me in the stomach. 58 00:02:43,270 --> 00:02:44,110 She saw that needle. 59 00:02:44,110 --> 00:02:46,299 And she literally, boom, right there in my stomach. 60 00:02:46,299 --> 00:02:48,340 She had elbowed the doctor that was leaning over, 61 00:02:48,340 --> 00:02:49,450 trying to hold her still. 62 00:02:49,450 --> 00:02:52,714 She fought like hell to prevent us from sticking her 63 00:02:52,714 --> 00:02:53,380 with the needle. 64 00:02:53,380 --> 00:02:56,530 And in that moment, she looked like a completely normal 65 00:02:56,530 --> 00:02:59,030 three-year-old child. 66 00:02:59,030 --> 00:03:01,379 And I felt hope. 67 00:03:01,379 --> 00:03:02,170 And I was thrilled. 68 00:03:02,170 --> 00:03:03,184 We got that line going. 69 00:03:03,184 --> 00:03:05,100 We fought like hell to get that line on board. 70 00:03:05,100 --> 00:03:06,700 We got the fluids onboard. 71 00:03:06,700 --> 00:03:08,950 Three precarious days passed, but Isatu 72 00:03:08,950 --> 00:03:10,900 started to get better. 73 00:03:10,900 --> 00:03:13,990 Five days passed, and she started walking again. 74 00:03:13,990 --> 00:03:15,740 She started acting normal. 75 00:03:15,740 --> 00:03:16,970 She started playing. 76 00:03:16,970 --> 00:03:18,250 We would go into the unit. 77 00:03:18,250 --> 00:03:21,400 And we were fogged and exhausted and treating as many kids 78 00:03:21,400 --> 00:03:23,920 as we could before we had to leave because of exhaustion. 79 00:03:23,920 --> 00:03:27,010 And we go in the unit, and then this would happen. 80 00:03:27,010 --> 00:03:29,110 And I'd look down, right, and there would be 81 00:03:29,110 --> 00:03:30,860 a Isatu wrapped around my leg. 82 00:03:30,860 --> 00:03:33,220 And so I tried to treat as many kids as I could. 83 00:03:33,220 --> 00:03:34,730 And then when I couldn't do anymore, 84 00:03:34,730 --> 00:03:35,980 I would have to peel her off. 85 00:03:35,980 --> 00:03:38,230 And sometimes it would take two or three providers 86 00:03:38,230 --> 00:03:40,120 to peel her off my leg. 87 00:03:40,120 --> 00:03:43,870 So she could go play with other kids. 88 00:03:43,870 --> 00:03:47,270 Ebola is a weird disease. 89 00:03:47,270 --> 00:03:49,760 It surprised us all the time. 90 00:03:49,760 --> 00:03:51,180 And it's really messed up disease. 91 00:03:51,180 --> 00:03:53,930 And one of the most messed up things as a pediatric emergency 92 00:03:53,930 --> 00:03:56,630 nurse was most of the kids that we treated that died 93 00:03:56,630 --> 00:04:00,485 had a great day the day before they died. 94 00:04:00,485 --> 00:04:01,360 They were sitting up. 95 00:04:01,360 --> 00:04:02,110 They were playing. 96 00:04:02,110 --> 00:04:03,760 They were asking for food and snacks. 97 00:04:03,760 --> 00:04:05,093 They were throwing things at us. 98 00:04:05,093 --> 00:04:08,890 We were throwing things back gently. 99 00:04:08,890 --> 00:04:11,170 And so that day that we peeled Isatu off my leg, 100 00:04:11,170 --> 00:04:13,600 I was so overjoyed that she was going to make it. 101 00:04:13,600 --> 00:04:17,089 I didn't think to myself, oh crap. 102 00:04:17,089 --> 00:04:19,660 This is her good day. 103 00:04:19,660 --> 00:04:20,200 And it was. 104 00:04:20,200 --> 00:04:22,650 105 00:04:22,650 --> 00:04:24,150 My buddy, Paul, he was a PICU nurse. 106 00:04:24,150 --> 00:04:25,230 And we were rounding on the kids. 107 00:04:25,230 --> 00:04:26,040 We had seen Isatu. 108 00:04:26,040 --> 00:04:26,730 We peeled her off. 109 00:04:26,730 --> 00:04:28,350 And we were treating all these other kids. 110 00:04:28,350 --> 00:04:30,450 And on the way out of the unit, we had been in these suits 111 00:04:30,450 --> 00:04:31,290 for about two hours. 112 00:04:31,290 --> 00:04:33,090 I could hardly see anything. 113 00:04:33,090 --> 00:04:36,500 Paul yelled to me, and he said, Tim, we have a problem. 114 00:04:36,500 --> 00:04:37,970 And he was standing next to Isatu. 115 00:04:37,970 --> 00:04:38,910 And so I walked over. 116 00:04:38,910 --> 00:04:40,368 And from a distance, it just looked 117 00:04:40,368 --> 00:04:42,850 like she was taking a nap. 118 00:04:42,850 --> 00:04:44,710 But as we got closer, we saw this. 119 00:04:44,710 --> 00:04:48,500 120 00:04:48,500 --> 00:04:49,970 Her entire body was shaking. 121 00:04:49,970 --> 00:04:52,310 She was seizing from head to toe. 122 00:04:52,310 --> 00:04:53,780 We called for help. 123 00:04:53,780 --> 00:04:56,750 Other team members came in, brought enough Valium 124 00:04:56,750 --> 00:04:58,430 to kill me and you together. 125 00:04:58,430 --> 00:05:01,010 But we couldn't stop her seizures. 126 00:05:01,010 --> 00:05:02,930 For eight hours, off and on, she seized. 127 00:05:02,930 --> 00:05:06,560 And when she stopped seizing, she stopped moving. 128 00:05:06,560 --> 00:05:08,890 Her eyes were closed. 129 00:05:08,890 --> 00:05:12,040 But she kept on breathing. 130 00:05:12,040 --> 00:05:14,320 The next day, she was laying there, didn't move again. 131 00:05:14,320 --> 00:05:15,730 But she kept on breathing. 132 00:05:15,730 --> 00:05:17,650 The third day, she was still breathing. 133 00:05:17,650 --> 00:05:19,960 Our job working with Isatu after that point 134 00:05:19,960 --> 00:05:21,940 was to clean her and prepare her body 135 00:05:21,940 --> 00:05:24,670 for the most beautiful funeral we could offer her because it 136 00:05:24,670 --> 00:05:26,590 was the least we could do. 137 00:05:26,590 --> 00:05:29,470 And my job that one day, three days after the seizures, was I 138 00:05:29,470 --> 00:05:31,480 was wiping her face down, cleaning her off. 139 00:05:31,480 --> 00:05:32,230 It was hot there. 140 00:05:32,230 --> 00:05:33,250 She was sweating. 141 00:05:33,250 --> 00:05:34,210 And I had a washcloth. 142 00:05:34,210 --> 00:05:35,800 And I pulled it across her face. 143 00:05:35,800 --> 00:05:39,625 And then I was coming over, she did this. 144 00:05:39,625 --> 00:05:41,000 And I thought I was hallucinating 145 00:05:41,000 --> 00:05:42,880 because I was hypoglycemic and exhausted 146 00:05:42,880 --> 00:05:43,880 and sad and heartbroken. 147 00:05:43,880 --> 00:05:45,463 And I had all these emotions going on. 148 00:05:45,463 --> 00:05:46,700 So I wiped her face again. 149 00:05:46,700 --> 00:05:49,100 And she took that washcloth in her mouth, 150 00:05:49,100 --> 00:05:52,140 and she sucked it dry. 151 00:05:52,140 --> 00:05:54,510 She was not ready to die. 152 00:05:54,510 --> 00:05:56,190 So we started hydrating her. 153 00:05:56,190 --> 00:05:57,410 She started to move again. 154 00:05:57,410 --> 00:05:58,860 She started to roll again. 155 00:05:58,860 --> 00:06:00,300 She got stronger. 156 00:06:00,300 --> 00:06:01,080 She got better. 157 00:06:01,080 --> 00:06:03,580 But she had a long road to recovery. 158 00:06:03,580 --> 00:06:04,920 Here's the problem. 159 00:06:04,920 --> 00:06:07,050 Ebola shut down every health system 160 00:06:07,050 --> 00:06:09,780 in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea. 161 00:06:09,780 --> 00:06:11,550 If you wanted to get cured of Ebola, 162 00:06:11,550 --> 00:06:14,034 you probably had to fly to another country. 163 00:06:14,034 --> 00:06:16,200 So we knew that, even though Isatu was doing better, 164 00:06:16,200 --> 00:06:19,590 there were no health facilities that could maintain her care 165 00:06:19,590 --> 00:06:22,050 and re-nourish her and give her the 24 hours of care 166 00:06:22,050 --> 00:06:24,540 that she needed. 167 00:06:24,540 --> 00:06:26,740 She needed a family. 168 00:06:26,740 --> 00:06:28,240 Now, remember, when Isatu came to us 169 00:06:28,240 --> 00:06:30,156 in the back of the ambulance and it was empty, 170 00:06:30,156 --> 00:06:32,410 our first assumption was mom and dad are already dead, 171 00:06:32,410 --> 00:06:35,470 which usually was the correct assumption. 172 00:06:35,470 --> 00:06:36,790 We had called to her village. 173 00:06:36,790 --> 00:06:39,414 We had reached out, nothing. 174 00:06:39,414 --> 00:06:41,330 So as Isatu was getting better and we were all 175 00:06:41,330 --> 00:06:43,954 falling in love with her, one of our social workers from Sierra 176 00:06:43,954 --> 00:06:46,910 Leone broke policies, stole one of our motorbikes 177 00:06:46,910 --> 00:06:49,310 that we were using to transport patients. 178 00:06:49,310 --> 00:06:51,140 And he went to her village because he 179 00:06:51,140 --> 00:06:52,250 wasn't going to give up. 180 00:06:52,250 --> 00:06:55,010 And he went door-to-door, home-to-home, asking people 181 00:06:55,010 --> 00:06:57,350 if they knew Isatu. 182 00:06:57,350 --> 00:06:58,840 He finally met this young man. 183 00:06:58,840 --> 00:07:00,500 He was 21, 22-years-old. 184 00:07:00,500 --> 00:07:02,060 And he said, we have a girl-- 185 00:07:02,060 --> 00:07:04,970 or no, he asked, if you know anyone named Isatu. 186 00:07:04,970 --> 00:07:06,450 And the man said, I had a daughter. 187 00:07:06,450 --> 00:07:08,000 She was my first. 188 00:07:08,000 --> 00:07:12,230 She died three weeks ago in an Ebola treatment unit. 189 00:07:12,230 --> 00:07:14,120 And the social worker put [? him ?] 190 00:07:14,120 --> 00:07:16,040 on the back of his motorbike. 191 00:07:16,040 --> 00:07:17,270 He said, where's your wife? 192 00:07:17,270 --> 00:07:19,520 They found his wife, put them back. 193 00:07:19,520 --> 00:07:20,970 They rode for two or three hours. 194 00:07:20,970 --> 00:07:23,210 And they drove straight to our Ebola treatment unit. 195 00:07:23,210 --> 00:07:25,280 And I was the lucky one who was on shift that day 196 00:07:25,280 --> 00:07:31,060 who got to clean Isatu the last time and carry her to her mom. 197 00:07:31,060 --> 00:07:33,420 Around about Valentine's Day, a few days 198 00:07:33,420 --> 00:07:35,920 before I was going to fly home to my, then, home in New York 199 00:07:35,920 --> 00:07:38,560 City, where I was going to sit in quarantine for 21 days, 200 00:07:38,560 --> 00:07:42,090 I had the opportunity to visit Isatu. 201 00:07:42,090 --> 00:07:43,590 And I went to where she was staying. 202 00:07:43,590 --> 00:07:45,450 Her grandmother was taking care of her. 203 00:07:45,450 --> 00:07:47,668 And I started to talk with her grandmother-- 204 00:07:47,668 --> 00:07:49,540 [LAUGHTER] 205 00:07:49,540 --> 00:07:50,950 206 00:07:50,950 --> 00:07:55,920 And as her grandmother gently peeled her off my leg-- 207 00:07:55,920 --> 00:07:58,430 it was easy to peel her off at this point-- 208 00:07:58,430 --> 00:08:00,780 her desire to play was as strong as I had seen. 209 00:08:00,780 --> 00:08:03,194 But she was still a little bit weak. 210 00:08:03,194 --> 00:08:04,610 I thought about that social worker 211 00:08:04,610 --> 00:08:08,750 who broke policy to go one last time into the village. 212 00:08:08,750 --> 00:08:12,650 And then I thought about our team, our entire team 213 00:08:12,650 --> 00:08:17,600 of medical professionals from Cuba, Canada, the UK, the US, 214 00:08:17,600 --> 00:08:21,640 Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria. 215 00:08:21,640 --> 00:08:22,390 We were Muslims. 216 00:08:22,390 --> 00:08:23,260 We were Christians. 217 00:08:23,260 --> 00:08:24,040 We were Jewish. 218 00:08:24,040 --> 00:08:25,030 We were Buddhists. 219 00:08:25,030 --> 00:08:27,150 We were atheists. 220 00:08:27,150 --> 00:08:31,490 We were special ops soldiers, and we were pacifists. 221 00:08:31,490 --> 00:08:32,480 We were liberal. 222 00:08:32,480 --> 00:08:33,440 We were conservative. 223 00:08:33,440 --> 00:08:35,090 We were reactionary. 224 00:08:35,090 --> 00:08:36,320 We were radical. 225 00:08:36,320 --> 00:08:38,780 And at night, over tears, we would debrief our day. 226 00:08:38,780 --> 00:08:40,820 And we would discuss and argue about all 227 00:08:40,820 --> 00:08:41,960 these political beliefs. 228 00:08:41,960 --> 00:08:45,320 But in the mornings, we had one sole focus. 229 00:08:45,320 --> 00:08:48,600 And that was to save lives. 230 00:08:48,600 --> 00:08:51,300 So maybe you think that we did this work. 231 00:08:51,300 --> 00:08:53,010 And in doing this work, we built bridges. 232 00:08:53,010 --> 00:08:55,720 If you do think that, I'd be honored. 233 00:08:55,720 --> 00:09:00,010 Ultimately, we just showed up. 234 00:09:00,010 --> 00:09:03,360 [APPLAUSE]