The Texas nurse who set off a firestorm of debate over how to handle Ebola after she boarded a plane shortly before being diagnosed publicly defended her actions today, telling the media that she wasn’t being careless.

Nurse Amber Vinson, 29, has been declared free from Ebola after contracting the virus while treating “patient zero” Thomas Eric Duncan at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, according to the Daily Mail. Duncan was a Liberian national who had traveled to the United States in September.

Vinson said she was placed in a special quarantine unit, which she described as a miserable experience. She was criticized by many for trying to fly from Texas to Ohio after treating Duncan in order to plan for her upcoming wedding to former college football star Derrick Markray.

She said she was never told by the hospital or the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that she should refrain from traveling, and that it was while she was in Ohio that she learned that a fellow nurse in the intensive care unit, 26-year-old Nina Pham, had contracted Ebola. Pham also recovered from the ailment.

When Vinson found out that Pham had caught it, she became afraid for herself, as she believed that if Pham had caught it then any of them could have. She said she checked her temperature several times before boarding a plane back home to make sure was not exhibiting symptoms. She was cleared by Texas Health before boarding the flight and was cleared to travel.

When she landed, she had a temperature of 100.3 degrees Fahrenheidt. The fever got worse and she developed other Ebola symptoms, such as diarrhea, which caused the fact that she had Ebola to dawn on her.

She said the training she had received for Ebola was little more than a “crash-course education.”