In 2014, I fell ill with Ebola after taking care of patients in Guinea. I spent 19 days in the hospital, and thankfully ultimately survived. But for months I had joint and muscle pains. It hurt to walk. My hair fell out in chunks. All of that got better.

But some things didn’t.

To this date, nearly six years after my “recovery,” I continue to experience difficulty concentrating. My ability to create new memories is drastically reduced. I forget names and details of people I knew very, very well. And in the past six years, it hasn’t gotten any better.

Honestly, it almost feels as if the virus indiscriminately pulled a razor blade through my brain, severing old memories at random, and on its way out dropped glue in its tracks to make it hard to create new ones.