‘Memphis pride’: Doctor, nurse connect while fighting COVID-19 in NY
Working in a busy COVID-19 unit in Kings County hospital in Brooklyn in late March, Dr. Neelam Khan heard something familiar in the way that nurse Christina Ballenger spoke.
“We’re all covered up, wearing protective gear, but I heard her accent. I thought, ‘I know that accent,’” said Khan. “We got to talking and turned out she was from Alabama, but lived in Memphis. I said, ‘I’m from Memphis too.’”
“And I had actually worked with a Dr. Khan at Methodist [hospital],” recalled Ballenger. “Then she said, ‘That’s my dad.’ We were both like, ‘Oh my goodness.’”
“When you’re from Memphis, you know people in common, that’s the Memphis connection no matter where you go,” said Khan.
As it happened, these two Memphians had found each other in the midst of the worst global medical emergency in more than a hundred years. They’d both volunteered to work in the most dangerous and active hotspot in the country, New York City. What they would see and experience together over the weeks to come would shape their view of the pandemic and forge a lasting friendship.
Overwhelming scenes
As the COVID-19 crisis began to intensify in March, Christina Ballenger was working for Methodist Le Bonheur Germantown Hospital. A native of Alabama, who moved to Memphis in 2010, Ballenger had served 17 years as a nurse.
Over the years she had worked in various areas. “Mostly I’ve been in behavioral health, but I’ve also been an administrative director of nursing, worked in ortho and oncology surgery,” she said, “That’s one thing about nursing — it’s so diversified you can do anything.”
With the coronavirus situation getting increasingly worse in New York City, straining hospital systems and taxing doctors and nurses to a breaking point, Ballenger felt compelled to help. “I just saw there was a need there,” she said.
Through a hospital staffing company, she signed a contract to head to New York in late March, to help in the city’s hospital system, which had become the frontline in the fight against COVID-19 in the United States.
Arriving in the city, she spent one day in an orientation in Manhattan. “The second day I was in an ICU unit,” she said. “We had a 17-bed unit, and 11 of the people died that day. It was pretty overwhelming. We had patients stacked, two patients in a room together, so they could get dialysis together, because they just didn’t have the resources.”
After a couple days, Ballenger was moved to the massive Kings County hospital in Brooklyn, to a COVID-19 unit there. “This hospital is five or six blocks, it’s huge,” said Ballenger. For the next few weeks, Ballenger worked relentlessly, trying to keep up as the the influx of patients continued.
Headquartered at a hotel in Manhattan with other medical staff, Ballenger would get on a chartered bus each day. “We’d leave at 7, work from 8 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. and then take the charter back to the hotel, get back at 10 o’clock at night. Basically I was going to work, going back to hotel. Shower, sleep, repeat.”
At one point, Ballenger worked 14 days in a row. Her slumber was sound tracked by the ambulance sirens that reigned in the New York night.
Facing wartime levels
Dr. Neelam Khan was also working at Kings County hospital. She was raised in the Bluff City, in a medical family: her father, Shahid Ishaq Khan, is an interventional cardiologist in Memphis, her sister Dr. Saira Khan is an endocrinologist in Pennsylvania, and brother Amir Khan is a resident at Yale University hospital.
A graduate of St. Mary’s, Khan went to Vanderbilt and then to Georgetown medical school. With her sights set on becoming a dermatologist, she was finishing up her residency in Brooklyn, working at several different hospitals including Kings County.
“And those were some of the biggest and hardest-hit hospitals,” said Khan. “In early March, there was declaration of a pandemic emergency where the hospitals and the number of COVID patients in Brooklyn were over capacity They really had a huge need and asked that all hands be on deck.
“Not only were people getting sick, but starting to die in great numbers,” she added. “I had colleagues spread thin, potentially getting exposed, and burning out. It had become a situation where they needed help. Initially they asked for volunteers. Since I don’t have any preexisting health concerns, and because I had done one year of adult medicine as part of my studies, I felt it was a duty for me to volunteer and work outside of dermatology.”
Suddenly sent into a busy COVID unit, on her first day, Khan chanced upon Ballenger, instantly making a connection. For both women having that personal bond in the midst of the crisis was a saving grace.
“You see such difficult and tough things on the floor,” said Khan. “And
Christina is literally one of the most phenomenal nurses I’ve ever worked with in my life. I have so much admiration and respect for her. The fact that she’s from Memphis and just dropped everything and came to New York to help. She’s so strong in so many ways. I leaned on her a lot.”
Khan says the patients felt Ballenger’s impact as well. “Christina had lot of patients bond with her. With COVID, you don’t have your family around, and the patients’ families are terrified and calling,” said Khan. “Basically everyone was doing whatever task was needed to be done. No job was too small, they did whatever needed to be done to help the patients and keep the hospital going through like a wartime-level pandemic emergency.”
Ballenger and Khan agree that dealing with COVID-19 is unlike anything they’d experienced or trained for. “It’s new so a lot isn’t known,” said Ballenger. “Initially we might be using one kind of medicine, but then seeing it’s causing more damage. Then you have to take a different approach. It’s all about adapting.”
“We luckily had a lot of good oversight… but what’s driving a lot of the treatment approaches at this point is really experimental,” said Khan. “All of the physicians are reading and keeping up with all the guidelines that other hospitals are using or the research as it’s coming out and adjusting the treatment on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis.”
Dealing with the surge of patients and helping them along, the added staff at Kings County was essential. “The [physicians] were so appreciative of these nurses that came from all over, these strong confident people like Christina who were there to help everybody,” said Khan. “Every discharge we had, every time a patient got better, it was such a win for everyone.”
“On one of the days where we had bunch of discharges, Christina and I took a picture together,” said Khan. The two women shed their protective gear for a moment, stood together and smiled for the camera.
“Two people on the unit from Memphis,” said Khan. “Memphis pride.”
A serious situation
During their time fighting COVID-19, both Ballenger and Khan have been active on social media, documenting their experiences in the hopes that their friends, family and people back home in Memphis will understand the stark realities of the coronavirus. Ballenger typically begins her daily Facebook posts with an admonishment to “STAY AT HOME.” It’s a concern borne out of what they’ve seen.
“In the media or on the news, everybody has their own perspective,” said Khan. “But when you are seeing it with your own eyes — taking care of these patients and knowing their stories and talking to their families — you see in a way that, for some reason, hasn’t really been portrayed widely. They can’t let news cameras into the hospitals so I think it’s tough for people to look past what just seems like numbers and statistics.
“But being the people who have to call and talk to family members after somebody has passed away and wait for the morgue to come get the body… for each and every one of us it’s a very big hit. As healthcare providers that’s not something anybody is used to in those numbers or in that way. No matter how much we’ve trained or how much we’re there to help, it really affects you. This is an incredibly serious situation.”
Khan, who typically visits her family in Memphis every couple months, says she is concerned with the latest numbers in Shelby County. “What we’ve seen here in New York, it hit us first and really hard. But, God forbid, the rest of the country is just on a delay. I hope that isn’t the case. But I’m a little worried.”
Khan added that she’s proud of Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland’s decision to keep the local stay-at-home order in place, despite the state of Tennessee beginning to lift restrictions.
“That’s a really good call for Memphis. Looking at the numbers, what’s going on in the rest of Tennessee is not the same trend in Shelby County,” said Khan. “Being more cautious now will make a big difference over the next few weeks and months.”
Although Khan and Ballenger both say they would return to Memphis if they were needed, for now they will be continuing the fight in New York.
“I was supposed to finish my residency and be done in July,” said Khan. “But this has been a curveball obviously. So for now, I’m staying here and doing what I can.”
Meanwhile, Ballenger’s first contract to work in New York ended on April 17. She came back to the South briefly last week to visit after her grandmother died following a fall. After a few days, she returned to New York City, and to Kings County hospital. She signed a maximum eight-week contract extension in order to continue the fight.
“The need is still here,” said Ballenger, “and that’s why I came to help.”