NBC News Exclusive: Ebola Survivor Dr. Kent Brantly Tells Matt Lauer “I Felt Like I Was About To Die”

Portions of Brantly’s First-Ever Interview Aired Tonight on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams – Embeddable Video Link Below

Additional Portions of the Exclusive Interview will Air Tomorrow on TODAY with Lauer Reporting Live from Emory University Hospital

The Full Report Will Air in an NBC News Primetime Special Friday, September 5 at 10pm/9c

NEW YORK – September 2, 2014 – – In an NBC News exclusive, Ebola survivor Dr. Kent Brantly told Matt Lauer “I felt like I was about to die.” Portions of Brantly’s first-ever interview aired tonight on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. A transcript of this preview is below and embeddable video link is available online here: http://nbcnews.to/1lxsrDe. If used, mandatory credit NBC News with airdate of primetime special.

Additional portions of the interview will air tomorrow on NBC’s TODAY with Lauer reporting live from Emory. Those portions will be available on TODAY.com after they air.

The full story, as well as additional reporting and coverage will air in an hour-long NBC News Primetime Special Friday, September 5 at 10pm/9c. As part of the special, Lauer will sit down with the doctors who treated Brantly at Emory University Hospital, and he will talk to Brantly’s wife Amber, who also lived with her husband and children in Liberia.  NBC News cameras will have exclusive access to the isolation room where Brantly was treated.

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MANDATORY CREDIT: NBC NEWS

MATT LAUER:

Brian, good evening. I’m here in Ashville NC., and this is where Dr. Kent Brantly, his wife Amber, and their children have been in seclusion since he was released from Emory University Hospital a short time ago. We were with him today when we received the news that one of his dearest friends, a doctor at the same hospital he worked at in Liberia has contracted Ebola.

[TAPE]

DR. KENT BRANTLY:

I was notified about that this morning and spent a good long while in tearful prayer.

MATT LAUER:

You had become I would imagine an expert at recognizing the symptoms and you had become extremely familiar with the progression of those symptoms, which takes us to July 23rd. July 23rd you wake up. Take me through the day.

DR. KENT BRANTLY:

I woke up that morning, and really I just felt a little off. Felt a little warm, a little under the weather. And I took my temperature and it was 100.0 I think.

MATT LAUER:

And your family was thousands of miles away. And you knew they couldn’t come back.

DR. KENT BRANTLY:

I was so thankful that Amber and the kids were not there. That would have been an overwhelming mental burden, if I had woken up sick next to my wife with one of my children snuggled next to me.

MATT LAUER:

Fortunately for Doctor Brantly, his wife Amber and their two children left Liberia three days earlier to attend a wedding in Texas.

AMBER BRANTLEY:

And then when he did call to tell me he had Ebola. I don’t know if I can describe that. I knew what was coming. I had seen him treat these people who had already been diagnosed. And I knew how it ends. I knew how everyone had ended up so far. So I had the disadvantage of having the knowledge of the course of the disease. I was scared.

MATT LAUER:

There was a time during those days in Liberia when you were really sick, that doctors didn’t think you would make it through one of those nights. Were you aware of that?

DR. KENT BRANTLY:

Yeah.

MATT LAUER:

Did they talk to you about it?

DR. KENT BRANTLY:

I don’t think they ever said, “Kent, I think you’re about to die.” But I felt like I was about to die. And I said to the nurse who was taking care of me, “I’m sick. I have no reserve. And I don’t know how long I can keep this up.” I thought, I’m not gonna be able to continue breathing this way. And they had no way to breathe for me if I had to quite breathing.

[END TAPE]

MATT LAUER:

Brian, Dr. Brantly says he’s still weak but he’s improving every day. And by the way, he says he wants to tell his story so that Americans won’t forget the terrible situation that is taking place in Liberia. Will he go back? He says, that’s a decision he’ll make down the road. Brian, back to you.

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