Friday, October 24, 2014

Today was an extraordinary day in the history of NIH. We discharged our patient via a densely attended press conference outside the north entrance of the Clinical Research Center. It was a beautiful fall day, crisp air and 60° and sunny. At 12:30 PM, I walked out of the Clinical Center with my arm around and accompanied by her sister Kathy and her mother Diana. Also, accompanying us was Dr. Francis Collins, Dr. Cliff Lane, Dr. Richard Davey, and the nurses and technicians from the Special Clinical Studies Unit of the NIH Clinical Center. Francis introduced me and I announced to the world that was Ebola free. I gave a shout-out to the physicians and nurses at Texas Presbyterian for taking such good care of her while she was there patient, and I thanked our own staff of doctors and nurses for also taking extraordinary care of I have come to become very fond of as she is such a sweet human being who was so brave in taking care of the patient with a deadly disease caused by an infection she contracted while taking care of him ( ). Over the past couple of days while she was in the Unit, we would talk a lot about how she wants to exit the hospital and she finally decided that she would give a very brief statement that we would help her craft. She would give her own ideas and we would put it in prose for her. It worked out very well. They were in essence her own words and they were heartfelt. As I called her up to the podium, I gave her a warm embrace in front of all the cameras. This embrace was ultimately on the front page of the Washington Post the next day (Saturday, Oct. 25), and on hundreds of newspapers, blogs, and Tweets and other social media. It went completely “viral”. In addition, she gave me a ribbon of the colors of the nursing school from which she graduated, Texas Christian University School of Nursing. And so I gave a shout out to all the nurses of the world as personified by the nurses at Texas Christian. I answered a bunch of questions from the press after the press conference. And then following the press conference something extraordinary also happened. President Obama invited , and I(together with Rick Davey and Cliff Lane) to the White House for a photo shoot as well as to talk and chat with the President. The President was charming as usual, and gave her a public hug in front of his photographers. We met for several minutes in the Oval Office with the President and Sylvia Burwell. Then Ronny Jackson, the President's physician showed us around the White House and gave us a tour of the medical clinics in the White House. The White House transportation group picked us up at the Clinical Center, drove us to the White House, and then drove her mother, his sister to a private plane in Baltimore which flew her to her mother's home in Fort Worth, TX. It was a bittersweet goodbye since we have become so fond of her and her family. I gave and her family my contact information including my cell phone number and told her to make sure if there was any issues that they want to talk to me about that I am available to them 24 hours a day. I returned to the NIH completely exhausted but ready to get back to work of crafting policies related to the emerging situation with healthcare workers returning from West Africa infected as did Craig Spencer last night.