“I saw patients, just in the hallway, in the emergency room … ICU patients just in the hospital,” he told CNN.
And while his help is needed and welcomed, Christensen is blunt about how much good he can really do.
“When I first got in, it felt like there was a blood clot on a blood vessel,” he said of his deployment to the hospital in a desert town, 110 miles northeast of Los Angeles.
“I want to be more effective,” Christensen said. ‘There’s so much more I want to do, but can I do more? I do not know.’
The medics become extra pairs of hands in a hospital that does not yet provide rations based on equipment or medicine, but where that other important resource – trained staff – has a critical shortage.
“We currently have more than 50 ICU patients in the hospital and we only have the staff to care for about 20 of them,” said Lindsay Packard, ICU manager. “The nurses are pushed to their absolute breakdown points. And then every day a little further.”
Packard praised the strength of her fellow nurses, some of whom work 18-hour shifts, get a short rest and then return to the hospital.
But she sees the toll on them, not only from the physical exertion, but also from the draining emotional nature of the work when they lose so many patients in what seems like a controlled chaos.
The vestibule has been converted into a ward for Covid patients. Makeshift walls have been installed around the hospital to create care units in any available space.
Behind curtains patients moan and try to breathe. Then there is the sound of uncontrolled coughing, then a moment of silence.
The silence is shattered by the sounds of an emergency – machines squeaking urgently and lights flickering; nurses rushing in; speakers blaring “Code blue! Code blue!” in calls for more help trying to save a life.
These battles are too often lost these days.
“In ICU, we see death and dying every day, but never on this scale,” Packard said. “The death toll has just come out of this world.”
The crisis is so widespread in the state that there is nowhere else to send patients for care. The medics of the National Guard are therefore being sent – now in 13 medical centers across the state – to back up staff and fill in the gaps when the workers themselves become ill.
Dr. Artur Grigoriyan, a specialist in critical care, did become ill with coronavirus. He said he had only mild symptoms and returned to work as soon as he was no longer contagious. Yet he was out for about two weeks. Now he works almost every day.
“The physical toll is very good, of course, but there is an emotional toll,” Grigoriyan said. “It’s really hard to see patents die. The death toll was very, very high.”
Denise Drake says she and her fellow nurses do everything in their power to care for the patients who come through the hospital’s doors.
“It’s very exhausting, very exhausting,” she said. “We use all the power we have … we all work together, whether we’re on the last string, last leg, we work together and let it happen.”
And another year into the global pandemic, there are patients who are amazed at the severity of the virus, Drake said. She hopes Californians will pay more attention to health experts and follow guidelines to limit the spread.
“It really is, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.”