Calif. Doctor in Ebola Quarantine in Bay Area

Oct. 31--Dr. Colin Bucks hasn't had close physical contact with another human being since Sept. 21 and he won't for another two weeks, when his quarantine period ends after his return from the Ebola front lines in Liberia.

Bucks, a Stanford emergency medicine doctor, landed at JFK International Airport last Friday. He arrived shortly after news broke that a doctor returning from West Africa had been diagnosed with Ebola in New York City, and just hours before a nurse flew into Liberty International Airport in Newark, N.J., and was forcibly quarantined for several days.

Bucks was lucky. Once health care screeners at JFK had cleared him for further travel -- and after forging typical flight delays and airport congestion -- he arrived back in the Bay Area on Saturday. He talked to San Mateo County public health officials and agreed to quarantine himself -- a decision he'd already made while he was still working in Liberia.

"I miss my family," Bucks, 43, said Thursday from his Redwood City home. "But we recognized in advance that it would be essential to be separated on the return. It's an extension of the deployment to me.

"We'll do the other parts -- the reunion, finally coming home -- after a safe isolation period is expired."

Bucks spent five weeks treating Ebola patients in northeast Liberia, volunteering with the International Medical Corps. The work, he said, was grueling but often satisfying -- Bucks and his colleagues saved more lives than they lost -- and after treating more than 130 people thought to have had Ebola, he's now considered one of the nation's experts in the disease.

Bucks never treated, or even touched, a suspected Ebola patient without wearing full protective gear. And throughout the community where he worked, he said, physical contact was extremely limited. But though he thinks his risk of having Ebola is slim, he decided to reassure himself and others by completely isolating himself for the three-week incubation period.

Thousands sickened

The West Africa Ebola outbreak is the worst in world history, having sickened more than 13,700 people and killed more than 4,920 so far, according to the World Health Organization. The hardest-hit nations have been Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Four people have been diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, among them a doctor who, like Bucks, had been working directly with patients. That man fell ill shortly after he returned home to New York, and for several days before he became symptomatic, he was moving about the city and interacting with people in public.

That doctor's illness, and public reaction to his lack of isolation, prompted public health officials and politicians to reconsider quarantine policies for people coming to the United States from West Africa.

The nurse was quarantined in New Jersey largely due to that reaction. She has since been allowed to return to her home in Maine to finish her 21-day quarantine, but she has been defying orders to totally isolate herself by riding her bike in public and meeting with reporters. She has spoken often against the quarantine she was forced into on her return.

Bucks said he couldn't speak directly to the decisions both the doctor and nurse had made in terms of their quarantines. But he said he understood the nurse's frustration at being penned up upon her return.

"I'm very sympathetic to what she's experienced. I think she was probably anxious to begin her isolation and have it be a restful time," Bucks said. "I don't want to put words in her mouth, but I understand what it means to work really, really hard and get back into the country. Everyone has their own process for re-establishing normalcy and getting their feet underneath them."

And he added that lost in the public discourse about quarantine is the fact that the doctors and nurses in the middle of these conversations are incredibly concerned about protecting public safety.

Dedicated to safety

"The returning health care workers are truly experts in this illness and understand the transmission and the progression of disease," Bucks said. "Everybody I worked with was very aware and absolutely dedicated to saying, 'I, as an individual, will not transmit this illness. I need everyone around me safe.'"

Bucks is on his own in his Redwood City home. His family has moved out temporarily, and his only contact with neighbors has been a wave from the front door.

His refrigerator was fully stocked before he returned last weekend, and the San Mateo County health department has promised to bring him anything else he needs and leave it on his porch. He checks in with county public health officials every day, in addition to filling out daily surveys noting his temperature and whether he's experiencing any symptoms of Ebola.

He has been given permission to go for solo walks or runs around his neighborhood, but he said he plans to stay inside or on his property, if only to ease any concerns his neighbors might have.

"In, heaven forbid, the low likelihood I develop symptoms, you want to have the number of contacts cut to the bare minimum. So far, that number is zero for me," Bucks said.

His days since his return have been booked, though. He said he went through a month's worth of minutes on his phone in his first five days back in the United States, and he has been talking constantly with his colleagues at Stanford, plus other health care administrators who want to tap into his new expertise on diagnosing and treating Ebola.

"Colin now is among a relatively small number of people who have returned to the United States having seen a sizable number of victims of Ebola, so he will have important observations to share," said Dr. Paul Auerbach, chief of the division of emergency medicine at Stanford.

The isolation so far hasn't been terrible -- or even all that isolating, given how much time Bucks spends talking to family, friends and colleagues by phone or video chats. But he's eager to be reunited with his family.

"It will be nice to hug another human being," Bucks said.

Erin Allday is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: eallday@sfchronicle.com

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