Ebola Diary: A Doctor in the Hot Zone

Douglas Lyon has decades of experience battling disease and despair in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The Oregon epidemiologist has worked with Medecins Sans Frontieres (the medical charity known in English as Doctors Without Borders), the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

Now, he’s on the Ebola front lines at a clinic in Kailahun, Sierra Leone, a town of roughly 30,000 inhabitants about 25 miles from the point where the country’s border meets those of Liberia and Guinea. In this excerpt from his diary, Lyon talks about the thin line between life and death, the difficulties of caring for patients when you’re dressed like an alien, and how a diaper change can break your heart.