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As Phelps Marks the Third Anniversary of COVID, Survivors Recall the Worst and the Best of Times

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Phelps officials, dignitaries, donors and at least one surviving patient cut a ribbon in honor of the hospital's COVID heroes. (phot courtesy of Phelps Hospital)

March 29, 2023

By Barrett Seaman—

Dr. Barry Geller remembers all too well the first patient, a woman, who came into the Emergency Department with what turned out to be COVID-19. It was almost exactly three years ago. “If you remember,” he said to an audience of fellow doctors, hospital officials, dignitaries and donors at a March 27 ceremony, “back in those days it took a week to get test results—if we even had tests. So we were going on clinical grounds.” That first patient stayed for a week, went home and eventually recovered, “but in that time before she left,” said Geller, “Phelps had essentially transformed itself.” Everyone there wore masks all the time; everyone practiced social distancing. Plexiglass walls went up to provide what was hoped would be an additional layer of safety. More than 100 rooms were converted into individual intensive care units.

Outside the hospital walls, Geller recounted, “the world was transforming around us. I remember very clearly driving to work every day without any traffic whatsoever. It was as if we were experiencing some kind of apocalypse—a dystopian version of the country we live in.”

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“Some kind of apocalypse”

“We were the front line; we were ground zero’” said the doctor. “Even though we were seeing COVID patients every day, we really didn’t know anything about COVID. We really didn’t know when we were traveling to work whether we would be put in harm’s way, and we also didn’t know whether we would be bringing harm home to our families”

For Geller and his wife, also an ER doctor, there was the added layer of fear for their two children, ages 13 and 11. Eventually, they decided the safest thing to do was to send them away to relatives on Long Island, what he described as “a very long and sad two months.”

Back at work, patients were by then coming in in waves. At one point, Geller recalls, they were “close to having 40 people on ventilators.” And then they stopped coming—not because COVID had gone away but because people were “too scared to go out of their houses.”

COVID survivor Jim Piereson and his wife Patricia chat with Dr. Owen O’Neill. IN the background is ER doctor Barry Geller (photo courtesy of Phelps Hospital

“I was almost dead”
Jim and Patricia Piereson live in Philipse Manor and, like most people during the pandemic, took precautions to avoid catching the virus. They did anyway. Patricia and their son had mild cases, but Jim’s was serious.” I recall sitting in front of the television on a Saturday night in late March,” he told the Phelps audience. At first, he felt fine, “but at some point, I felt something invading my lungs. It was almost palpable.” A few days later, he collapsed. His wife called 911 and he was whisked by ambulance the short distance to Phelps. His blood oxygen level, normally around 95, was down to 77. He was mentally lucid, he recalls, but physically, “I was almost dead.”

At another, perhaps less well-equipped medical facility, Piereson might well have died. But at Phelps, Dr. Owen O’Neill, director of “Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine, suggested that Jim Piereson might be a good candidate for a trial, employing the oxygen hoods used in hyperbaric chambers to treat deep sea divers suffering from “the bends,” as well as a variety of other disorders. The idea was to administer concentrated doses of oxygen as a non- invasive alternative to the ventilators placed on thousands of COVID patients during the pandemic, often as a last resort. Piereson spend 18 hours under the hood, receiving a steady stream of life-saving oxygen. Just a few weeks before Piereson was hospitalized, Mary Melvin and her daughter, Melissa Melvin-Deegan had separately donated money used to purchase the oxygen hoods and were present at the ceremony to hear him recount his ordeal, which, thanks to them, ended happily.

The Worst of Times, the Best of Times

The same day the first COVID patient came to Barry Geller’s ER was the day Eileen Egan started her new job as Executive Director of Phelps Hospital—what the hospital’s Community Board Chair Kevin Plunkett called her “baptism by fire.”

Egan recalled “the worst of times and the best of times,” as fear and disease vied with hope and a rediscovered sense of community. We saw support from the community like never before,” said Egan—in particular on a day in April 2020 when firefighters, police and EMTs from all around the area paraded around the hospital, their horns and sirens blaring in appreciation for the men and women inside struggling to save lives. “Everyone who could ran outside’” said Egan, “and those that couldn’t lined all the windows in the hospital to watch. We’ll never forget that.”

Area fire fighters, police and EMTs honor Phelps “heroes” April, 2020 (photo by Barrett Seaman)

“I’m honored to be here today to pay tribute to the amazing and talented group of healthcare heroes at Phelps Hospital,” said Plunkett, as a ribbon was cut dedicating a plaque in their honor. “The solidarity and support this community provided to this institution during the COVID crisis was remarkable. It is an emotional day and a privilege to celebrate the light and beauty of the lifesaving work you do.”

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