New York’s only Ebola patient Dr. Craig Spencer spoke out in an essay published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine to address the misconceptions behind the coverage of his ordeal. He stated that he was falsely accused of putting the public at risk and depicted as “a fraud, a hipster and a hero” after he was hospitalized last fall.
“The truth is, I am none of those things,” Spencer wrote. “I’m just someone who answered a call for help and was lucky enough to survive.”
Spencer, 33, an attending physician in the emergency department of New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, was already challenged with readjusting after returning to New York from treating Ebola patients in Guinea with Doctors Without Borders, despite contamination and excessive press exposure. “The suffering I’d seen, combined with exhaustion, made me feel depressed for the first time in my life.”
Potentially being ill was only exacerbated by public response to the scare, and he felt judged for his behavior before he even displayed Ebola symptoms, as The New York Times pointed out.
Dr. Spencer was taken to Bellevue Hospital Center on Oct. 23 after reporting a fever of 100.3. City officials said he had felt fatigue on Oct. 21, prompting some, including at one point Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, to suggest he had been careless for having gone bowling, riding the subway and eating at restaurants in the days before he had a fever.
“The whole country soon knew where I like to walk, eat, and unwind,” he wrote. “People excoriated me for going out in the city when I was symptomatic, but I hadn’t been symptomatic — just sad.”
For a man who was afraid for his life, the attention following his infection didn’t seem to match what was really going on.
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He saw himself as a pawn of politicians, who, “caught up in the election season, took advantage of the panic to try to appear presidential.” He criticized Mr. Cuomo and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey for reacting to his illness by imposing quarantines on health workers and others who had been exposed to Ebola patients in West Africa but showed no symptoms.
“Instead of being welcomed as respected humanitarians, my U.S. colleagues who have returned home from battling Ebola have been treated as pariahs,” Spencer wrote.
On Wednesday the New York State Health Department said in a statement: “We recognize the extraordinary dedication of these health care workers in helping to end this epidemic, but also recognize the need to protect the health of all New Yorkers. Our quarantine plan struck this balance.”
The balance between what behavior is reasonable for people in such a tragic circumstance is difficult to nail down. But although Spencer is thankfully healthy now, he has endured enough to undoubtedly change his life.
