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Hi, my name is Jennifer McQuiston,
and I'm a veterinarian at CDC, and I live in Atlanta, Georgia.
And the thing that scares me the most
about an outbreak investigation
is going into an unknown situation
and not knowing if there's security
and stability on the ground,
whether there might be a violent situation
you can encounter during the course of the investigation.
Sometimes that's international,
but it can also be a domestic situation,
such as after September 11th.
The other thing that scares me more now that I'm a mother
is not worrying that I could get sick when I go out in the field,
but knowing what diseases are out there
that my children could get,
and every time I pull a tick off of my daughter,
I'm thinking of the worst-case scenario.
The thing that motivates me to keep going
is knowing not that I'm helping one person,
but that I have the potential to help 1,000.
I think it's a little bit of the same rush that a surgeon gets,
but it's magnified because you're helping so many people.