Entering the Ebola Treatment Center wards today, the so-called 'hot zone" bubbled up brief, intrusive waves of mixed excitement and pit-in-your stomach panic.  Putting on the PPE is a ritual. If it is thought of as a ritual and is done repetitively in the same sequence, with the same attention to detail, then all the better chance of being done correctly.  As I got geared up today I had a storm of visuals rush into my brain.  I saw my childhood friends, Matt and Jeff, in out of control go-carts down the hill behind my elementary school in late autumn, Poughkeepsie, New York.  I saw my best friend,since passed, on his purple Honda CB750 motorcycle making goofy faces in his helmet as we leaned and drifted out in the Austin hill country on a ride going so fast we defeated the Texas heat.  I saw my mother in her nurses outfit replete with bobbie-pinned hat and white stockings leaning over to give me a kiss goodnight on a cold Burlington, VT night in 1975.  I saw my wife, under her veil, crying and smiling on the day we joined as teammates in Beacon, NY less then two weeks after 9-11.  I saw the birth of my two children at Centennial Hospital in Nashville, TN and saw my hands cutting the cords under the holy operating theatre light.  And then I saw there, through the opening in the white tents, women splayed out on plastic mattresses on the floor alongside their babies with home-made wooden IV poles standing attention above them like the palm tree trunks that surround the Bai Suba compound where I sleep.  Today, the first day of 2015, was the first day I went inside the Ebola Treatment Center confirmed cases wards.

Once you get inside you realize you have work to do and you set out to do it efficiently because you only have about 60-90 minutes before you cannot tolerate the heat inside the PPE any longer.  Being a sweat prone man, I start sweating just about immediately.  I dunked my boots in the chlorinated water and entered.  To my left was one of our patients laying in bed listening to the radio.  Ever wonder what happened to Phil Collins? Well apparently he has been transforming his heart grabbing hits, such as "One More Night" (my prom song, of course) into African spiced reggae remakes.  Yes, the reggae version of "One More Night" greeted me as I first entered.  I laughed and smiled as the sweat dripped down from the cliff of my chin.  Everything was going to be just fine.  And it was.  We rounded on all of patients and then came out to verbally give all the clinical information to a nurse who stood outside of the unit, through an orange fence, and wrote it all down.  You can't take anything out of the unit as it is all contaminated.

Coming out I went through the usual 20 minute "doffing" procedure all the while getting sprayed with chlorinated water with a hand pump sprayer you might see being used by landscapers or pest control workers.  It actually feels cooling.  After you are done and back outside you head to change your scrubs and boots and get on to the charting.

Passing by all the mud brick houses and roadside market stalls today, it was strangely quiet for New Years Day.  Celebrations and gatherings all over the world. And Sierra Leone is usually no different my colleagues say.  Except this year.  The government's decree that there are to be no public gatherings or celebrations is still in effect. And it is being followed.

When I got home I went for a long, slow walk along the perimeter road that surrounds our housing units.  I put on my headphones and cranked up Paolo Nutini.  It was nice to have someone else in my head as I took the earth and the sky in and used them too to fill the void.

A battery, I am told, does better in the long run if you let it drain down completely before recharging.

Amen.  And make it be so and more.