A doctor who survived a brief bout with Ebola said in an essay this week that he was falsely portrayed in the media as placing the public at risk.

Dr. Craig Spencer, who was New York’s only Ebola patient, said he was neither the “a fraud, a hipster, [or] a hero, as he was alternatively portrayed, according to a New York Times report.

Spencer wrote that he was “none of those things” in the essay, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. He argued instead that he was simply answering the call for help and was fortunate to survive.

It is Spencer’s first public description of what happened with his illness and his first commentary on how he was treated in the press and in the public.

The 33-year-old physician worked at the emergency department of New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, and had gone to Guinea to treat Ebola patients with Doctors Without Borders. After returning, he said he felt depressed having witnessed such suffering. Guinea, along with Sierra Leone and Liberia, have seen thousands die from an Ebola outbreak that is only just now beginning to subside.

Spencer was taken to the hospital on Oct. 23 after reporting a fever of 100.3, and officials reported he felt fatigue two days before. This report caused many in the public, including New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, to suggest that his actions are reckless since he had gone bowling, ridden the subway, and dined in restaurants before the fever struck.

While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does list fatigue as a classic Ebola symptom, Spencer said he was exhausted from what he had gone through in Guinea, and had not had symptoms before Oct. 23.

He said people “excoriated me for going into the city when I was symptomatic, but I hadn’t been symptomatic,” according to the Times report.

After 19 days of treatment, he was released. He did not pass on the infection to anyone else.

He said that he was in constant fear of contracting Ebola while in Guinea, and in a strange way, learning he had contracted Ebola alsmot came as a relief to him. However, it was also a surprise, because he had kept a spreadsheet in Africa documenting his lvel of risk and every day he decided it had been minimal.