Brandon Hassett
ID#: 813001507
Reflective Writing #2
The article I have selected is entitled "Woman saves three relatives from Ebola" published by Elizabeth Cohen, Senior Medical Correspondent for CNN on September 26, 2014. According to the report a twenty-two year old Liberian woman saved the lives of her 3 family members, who contracted the deadly Ebola virus. Fatu Kekula nursed her father, mother, sister and cousin, taking care of them all by herself single-handedly feeding them, cleaning them and giving them medications. Unfortunately her cousin lost the fight against the tropical virus. Her Ebola nightmare started July 27, when her father, Moses, had a spike in blood pressure. She took him to a hospital in their home city of Kakata. A bed was free because a patient had just passed away. What no one realized at the time was that the patient had died of Ebola. Moses, 52, developed a fever, vomiting and diarrhea.
When the hospital closed down because nurses started dying of Ebola Fatu took her father to Monrovia, the capital city, a somewhat far distance on difficult roads. Three hospitals turned him away because they were full. She took him back to another hospital in Kakata where the doctor misdiagnosed him and said he had typhoid fever and did little for him, so Fatu took him home, where he infected three other family members. While operating her one-woman Ebola hospital for two weeks, Fatu consulted with their family doctor, who would talk to her on the phone, but wouldn't come to the house. She gave them medicines she obtained from the local clinic and fluids through intravenous lines that she started.
After reading this article I went through a rollercoaster of emotions. Firstly I thought of Fatu as a "Superwoman" because of her sheer...