“I was seeing patients, just lining up in the hallway, in the emergency room … ICU patients across the hospital,” he told CNN.
And while his help is needed and welcome, Christensen is open about how well he is really capable of doing.
“When I first came in, it looked like maybe a band-aid on arterial bleeding,” he said of his deployment at a hospital in a deserted city 110 miles northeast of Los Angeles.
“I want to be more effective,” said Christensen. “There’s a lot more I want to do, but can I do more? I don’t know.”
Doctors become extra pairs of hands in a hospital that has not yet had to ration care based on equipment or medication, but where this other vital resource – trained staff – is in critical need.
“We have more than 50 ICU patients in the hospital now and we only have staff to care for about 20 of them,” said Lindsay Packard, manager of the ICU. “Nurses are being pushed to their absolute limit. And a little more each day.”
Packard praised the strength of his fellow nurses, some of whom are working 18-hour shifts, taking a short break and returning immediately to the hospital.
But she sees their price, not just for the physical effort, but for the emotionally draining nature of work when they are losing so many patients in what appears to be controlled chaos.
The lobby has been converted into a Covid patient ward. Improvised walls were placed around the hospital to create care units in any available space.
Behind the curtains, patients groan and try to breathe. Then there is the sound of an uncontrolled cough and then a moment of silence.
The silence is broken by the sounds of an emergency – machines honking urgently and lights flashing; nurses running in; speakers shouting “Blue code! Blue code!” in calls for more help trying to save a life.
Often, these days, these battles are being lost.
“In the ICU, we see death and die daily, but never on that scale,” said Packard. “The death toll has just left this world.”
The crisis is so widespread in the state that there is nowhere else to send patients for care. Thus, National Guard doctors are sent – now at 13 medical centers across the state – to support the team and fill in the gaps if the workers themselves become ill.
Dr. Artur Grigoriyan, an intensive care specialist, fell ill with coronavirus. He said he had only mild symptoms and went back to work as soon as he stopped being infectious. Still, he was gone for about two weeks. Now he works almost every day.
“The physical price, of course, is big, but there is an emotional impact,” said Grigoriyan. “It is very difficult to see patents die. Mortality has been very, very high.”
Denise Drake says she and her fellow emergency room nurses do everything they can to care for patients who pass through hospital doors.
“It is very exhausting, very exhausting,” she said. “We use all the strength we have … we all work together, whether on the last rope, the last leg, we work together and make it happen.”
And still a year after the start of the global pandemic, there are patients who are surprised by the ferocity of the virus, Drake said. She expects Californians to pay more attention to health experts and follow the guidelines to contain the spread.
“It’s real, you’re not going anywhere anytime soon.”