UK Ebola nurse tells of fight to live
The Scottish nurse who contracted Ebola has revealed how the illness took her from wondering "what all the fuss was about" to the brink of death.
Pauline Cafferkey, 39, was discharged from hospital on Saturday after making a complete recovery following three weeks in a high level isolation unit (HLIU) at the Royal Free Hospital in London.
In an interview with the Scotland on Sunday, she told how her symptoms took time to emerge, but by her lowest point she believed she would die.
She says at one stage she felt she wanted to give up.
"I can't carry on any more," she told her doctors..
The nurse had volunteered with Save The Children at the Ebola Treatment Centre in Kerry Town, Sierra Leone, before returning to the UK.
"I had a lovely doctor in Glasgow who had the horrible job of breaking the news to me that I had Ebola," she said.
"I just said, 'I've got a fight on my hands,' as I knew what potentially could happen to me and did happen to me.
"I was fine for the first two or three days and couldn't understand what all the fuss was about, but then I did deteriorate."
The illness and medication left her semi-conscious, with a painful rash and a sensitivity to contact and needles, and she said she cannot remember a week of her two week treatment.
Ms Cafferkey was treated with an experimental anti-virus drug, ZMabb, and blood plasma from survivors - and said she will donate her own plasma to help others battling the disease in Africa.
Dr Michael Jacobs, head of the infectious diseases team at the Royal Free, was in charge of Ms Cafferkey's treatment and said she had to cure herself.
"She used her own immune system, which has cleared the virus, but we're very fortunate here to have specialist facilities," he said.
Ms Cafferkey kept her spirits up in hospital with Scottish soft drink Irn-Bru, Sugar Puffs cereal, an iPad playlist including classical music and BBC Radio soap The Archers, she said.
She is "very happy to be alive" and looking forward to a bath, seeing her friends and family, a vegetarian Chinese meal and returning to her day job working with babies under five.
Ms Cafferkey said she will take a break from aid work but has not ruled out returning to it in the future, and said she would love to return to "absolutely stunning" Sierra Leone on holiday.
