Dallas: Nina Pham spends her
days in isolation inside the same hospital where she contracted the
Ebola virus working as a critical care nurse. She discusses her care
plans with doctors, said a friend who has corresponded with her. She
reads, video-chats with her family and keeps in touch with friends
through text messages and emails. "She's hopeful and just resting," said the friend, Jennifer Joseph, who until recently worked with Pham at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. "Not letting the media and all this overwhelm her. She's just having some time to herself, to be able to read and relax."
Joseph called Pham, 26, a conscientious and careful nurse who double-checked her charts and never seemed to make a mistake, a description that deepens the mystery of how a nurse garbed in gloves, mask and other protective gear contracted the disease from a Liberian man who died last week of Ebola. On Monday, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that Pham's positive test for Ebola over the weekend had prompted the agency to "substantially" rethink how it approaches infection control for health officials.
Frieden also apologized for the wording of his comments of a day earlier, in which he suggested that the nurse had apparently breached safety protocol at the hospital. On Monday, Frieden said he had not meant to give the impression he was blaming Pham - whom he did not identify by name - for contracting Ebola.
Pham's diagnosis fanned fears among hospital workers and raised questions about how the authorities have been monitoring health care workers like Pham, who treated or came into contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian Ebola victim.
Officials have said that Pham felt a low-grade fever overnight Friday, and apparently drove herself to the emergency room at Presbyterian, where she was admitted and put into isolation 90 minutes later. Officials say she is in stable condition.
Since local officials announced her positive test for Ebola early Sunday, the news has resonated through circles of friends who worked with Pham or studied nursing with her at Texas Christian University, and through the Vietnamese community in Fort Worth, where she grew up.
In interviews and news reports, friends have described her as a compassionate and caring nurse who loved her job, was grounded by her Catholic faith and cherished her King Charles spaniel, Bentley, named for her old neighborhood.
A Dallas city spokeswoman has said that the city would care for Pham's dog. (Read)
In photos from friends and family and her now-deactivated Facebook account, Pham is invariably smiling - posing with a friend on a trip to Boston, sitting outside at a cafe or taking a selfie while her dog nuzzles her.
"She's able to make friends in any setting, any scenario," Joseph said. "She has a contagious laugh."
The daughter of political refugees from Vietnam, she grew up in the Bentley Village subdivision of Fort Worth, in a large red-brick home that her family built in the mid-1990s, said a next-door neighbor, Jim Maness. Neighbors said the family was exceedingly private and quiet, and they saw Pham only when she was walking her dog, or coming and going from home in a car emblazoned with stickers from Texas Christian University.
Pham attended the accelerated nursing program at Texas Christian in Fort Worth, and graduated in 2010.
Ashlee Mitchell, a friend from college, said she bonded almost instantly with Pham as they took classes together. Not long after they met, she said, "We were best friends."
On Sunday, the university sent an email to students letting them know that "a TCU nursing alum" had received an Ebola diagnosis, but said she had not been on campus recently, and asked the community to keep her in their prayers.
Pham and her family were active at Our Lady of Fatima, a largely Vietnamese Roman Catholic church, said Tom Ha, the church's education director. Because the family prizes its privacy, he said, congregants are meeting in small groups, rather than large gatherings, to pray for Pham.
Christina Mykahnh Hoang, another church member, said Pham's mother had simply asked friends "to continue to pray."
Ha said Pham's family had not been overly worried about her risk of exposure at Presbyterian, and had been stunned by the news. Her family could not be reached for comment, and have said almost nothing publicly.
"They did not have a concern when the daughter was working with the patient of Ebola," Ha said. "Once they got the news that their daughter caught it, the family was totally shocked. Many Vietnamese-Americans do not know much about the disease. They really don't have a concrete idea of what it is, so people are very confused about it."
Mitchell, Pham's college friend, said the two spoke only fleetingly about her work at the epicenter of Ebola in the United States. Duncan was treated on Pham's unit, Mitchell said in a brief telephone interview Sunday, but Pham had said that only "at one point in time did she have him."
Immersed in such high-stakes work, the two friends tried to steer their conversations toward happier subjects.
"When we talk, we try not to talk about work," said Mitchell, who lives in Colorado. "We didn't talk about the Ebola incident."
To Joseph, Pham was both a great nurse and great friend. She said Pham helped her get oriented at Presbyterian, and during their 12-hour shifts together, taught her "how to become the nurse I am today." Frequently, when thinking about a patient, Pham would ask herself, "What would I do if this was my mom, dad or grandparent?" Joseph said.
She said she feels confident that Pham is getting the best treatment possible and will pull through, and said her work treating a man infected with a deadly disease that has spread fear and paranoia across this city exemplified her commitment to her profession and compassion for people in need.
"We have heroes that are willing to make sacrifices when no one else will," Joseph wrote in an email. "Because I know for a fact the she would take care of him again."
© 2014, The New York Times News Service
