Ebola nurse: Reports she felt sick before flying ‘completely false’

Dallas nurse Amber Vinson, now Ebola free, on Thursday defended her decision to fly to Ohio after treating an Ebola patient and called reports that she felt sick before flying home to Dallas “completely false.”

“I felt fine; I felt normal,” she said on NBC’s “Today” show. “I was never told that I could not travel.”

Vinson said she was “floored” when she heard that her colleague, Nina Pham, contracted the virus, so she called health officials before boarding a return flight to Dallas to make sure she didn’t need to take extra precautions.

“I did everything that I was instructed to do every time, so I felt like, if Nina could get it, any one of us could get it,” she said. “I embrace protocol and guidelines and structure, because in my day-to-day nursing, it is a matter of life and death, and I respect that fact.”

Vinson said that she didn’t get much training at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital before treating Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man who traveled to Dallas after he was exposed to the deadly virus. She added, “The first time that I put on the protective equipment, I was heading in to take care of the patient.”

Despite protective equipment and protocol, Vinson and Pham caught the virus, but both were treated and eventually released with a clean bill of health.

And despite her ordeal, Vinson said that she’d “absolutely” treat another Ebola patient.

“Nursing is what I do. I could never see a patient there that needs help and not do everything I can to help them,” she said.