Watch U.S. Ebola Survivors Describe Fighting the Deadly Virus

Dr. Kent Brantly vividly remembers the day he was told he had Ebola. A missionary doctor with Samaritan’s Purse in Liberia, Brantly had been treating Ebola patients and was familiar with the deadliness of the disease.

And yet, he didn’t panic when a colleague broke the news.

“It was really a very surreal moment. It was a very solemn moment,” Brantly says. “I felt a very strange but overwhelming sense of peace.”

For Dallas nurse Nina Pham, who had cared for Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan at Texas Health Presbyterian in Dallas, learning that she tested positive for Ebola was devastating news.

“Because Mr. Duncan had died three days prior, flashbacks started coming to my head of how his disease progressed and eventually led to his death,” Pham says.

In the video above, Brantly and Pham, along with nurse Amber Vinson, Dr. Rick Sacra and medical aide Nancy Writebol — all of whom have survived Ebola — recount their experiences.

TIME named Ebola Fighters as the 2014 Person of the Year. Read the full story here.