Photo caption and credit:  Preston Gorman, now living in Austin, was disabled by post-traumatic stress disorder for years after surviving Ebola in 2015. (Ilana Panich-Linsman/for The Washington Post)

December 27, 2019

When they wheeled Preston Gorman into a light spring breeze outside the National Institutes of Health nearly five years ago, he was, medically speaking, among the most fortunate people on the planet.

Gorman’s doctors had just defeated advanced Ebola virus disease, one of the most fearsome infections known to medicine. There were smiles and hugs and handshakes in the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md., where Gorman had spent the previous month in isolation, attended every moment by a medical SWAT team in moon suits.

Doctors, nurses and other caregivers gathered for a short prayer with Gorman and his family before sending him home to Texas in the same private jet that had raced him to NIH from Sierra Leone. At his parents’ home outside Dallas, siblings, aunts and cousins turned out to celebrate the emaciated young man who had returned from the dead.

 And then Gorman’s life fell apart.

At a time when another Ebola outbreak is spreading, Gorman is a reminder of how easily trauma can be overlooked after severe illness. Gorman’s family and friends, and the medical system that so skillfully battled his disease, all missed the gravity of his condition.

“No one said, ‘You’ve just been selected for a really hard journey, and by the way none of your family is gonna understand, none of your friends are going to understand and you’re not going to understand,’ ” Gorman recalled. “They’re thinking it’s all over, and I walk into this group of people, and I don’t even know what’s happening.”

A prolonged battle with severe post-traumatic stress disorder cost Gorman his family, the woman he intended to marry, his friends and his job. One of the luckiest men alive, he considered suicide.

Gorman, 38, who chose to remain anonymous until now, was one of 11 people treated for Ebola infections in the United States during the West Africa outbreak of 2014-2016. The others have been previously identified.

Today Gorman is climbing back. He has a job, roommates and new friends in Austin. He maintains his faith, though his views on religion have changed. He still struggles at times, but he also feels joy again. And hope.

“It forced me to dig deep, find out who I really was, and rely on God’s direction in the healing process that is still ongoing to this day,” Gorman said in one of many emails and conversations over the past few months. “There were many mistakes and dark moments. But a journey that, I hope, in the end will be worth it.”

Research has revealed extensive post-traumatic stress disorder among Ebola survivors, their caregivers and witnesses to the widespread death in West Africa. During his brief stay in Sierra Leone, Gorman was all three.

To read the entire article by Lenny Bernstein, click here.