My wife is a nurse and we discussed what happens if she has to treat Ebola patients

My wife is a critical care ICU nurse on the west coast and last night we talked about the current Ebola situation in the United States.

A nurse with 10 years experience in critical care and 5 years of cardiac ICU experience, so 15 years total. She is in management and has been in meetings for most of the last week.....the subject has been Ebola and the lack of training and proper equipment to deal with an outbreak situation.

The hospitals in our area are scrambling to be prepared for the first patient if and when they arrive....which is going to be hard with flu season approaching as well. The conversation took a left turn when she said
" I have been thinking and I was talking to other people at work, if I have to treat a patient with Ebola I won't come home ! I don't want my family which I love to even possibly be exposed to something that might potentially kill them."

She then started to cry and said "it scares me that I could go to work and if I find out that I treated an Ebola patient and was exposed.... I would have to be quarantined and might never see my husband or son face to face again!" She went on to say that the likelihood of catching it is pretty low with all of the PPE (personal protective equipment) and decontamination procedures, but there is always a risk and that is what scares her.

So in the event of exposure, my wife will either stay in our home and my son and I will live at my Parents home or in laws home with only skype or FaceTime as our face to face communication.

This is a sad possibility....even a small chance of not seeing my wife again is heartbreaking when the whole current situation could have been prevented from getting any worse by stopping people in certain areas from entering our country. Ebola may have come here anyway but the current situation becomes increasingly dangerous the less precautions we take.