The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
From sports heroes to unsung heroes
Quinnipiac, Yale graduates are on the medical front line during these trying times in America
One is the all-time base stealer for the Yale softball team.
The other was the 2013 NEC women’s basketball tournament most valuable player who led Quinnipiac to its first NCAA Tournament berth.
Those are lines in their life’s résumé now. Notable lines to be sure, for they give indication of the athletic achievements of Dr. Kathy Ching and Brittany McQuain, RN. Yet during this time without sports, they also are steppingstones that lead us to the vital careers our state’s former college athletes lead when their playing days are done.
One problem — a frustrating one — I’ve run into during the COVID-19 pandemic is the reluctance of many doctors and nurses to agree to interviews for a column. Not controversial “Trump takes hydroxychloroquine” or “China hid the disease” pieces, mind you, but ones of their careers, their lives during coronavirus.
Their bosses would rather they don’t talk. They are stressed and overburdened.
Or they feel others deserve the praise.
I honor all their responses. They are honest. They are genuine. Yet, this, too, is a time for straightened priorities, for honoring the essential and not fawning over the glamorous excesses of popular culture. Even as we push hard to reopen our everyday lives, we were
met Wednesday by news the world had the highest number of reported COVID-19 cases in a 24-hour period.
We’re not past COVID-19, not even close. We need Shelby Sferra, a former Quinnipiac basketball player and now surgical resident at hard-hit Columbia Presbyterian in New York. We need Kathy Ching. We need Brittany McQuain. And all the rest.
Ching, a general surgeon with the Providence Medical Group in her hometown of Portland, Oregon, graduated from Yale in biology in 2000. Before she left New Haven, Ching had stolen 163 career bases, 16th in NCAA history. In 1997, she had 64 steals, ninth on the single-season NCAA list, including six in one game against Vermont. She is the Rickey Henderson of the medical profession. Ching laughed. She hadn’t heard that one.
“For softball, because leads aren’t allowed, it’s just getting a good jump off the pitcher and running really fast,” Ching said. “It’s basically pure speed.
“Playing sports in general, having something you are dedicated to, really helps to form who you are. You learn how to focus, work at something really hard to perfect it, even though you know you’re not going to be perfect. You realize you can’t control everything, so you do the best you can and work hard to arrange things in your favor. There are things in medicine that can knock you down, so you back up, get back to work.”
Ching wasn’t planning on becoming a surgeon while at Yale. She spent three years in the labs after graduation before deciding to go to the Oregon Health & Science University medical school.
“I decided I would much rather be a physician than a researcher,” Ching said. “I love operating.”
Oregon hasn’t been as hard-hit as places like Washington, New York and Connecticut. Operations for COVID-19 patients, Ching said, were avoided if at all possible. Meanwhile, Ching had be part of triage decision-making. What was best for the patient vs. the harm to the patient of a delay and potential harm if the patient was contagious. Also, at the beginning, personal protective equipment and ventilators were at a premium.
“It was a little chaotic because we didn’t know what to expect at the beginning,” Ching said. “No one knew much about the virus. The response, because everything looked so bad, was to shut down. I think that was appropriate until we found out what was going on.”
A general surgeon, Ching said, takes care of various surgical emergencies that come in with matters like intestinal blockage, appendicitis, abscesses, in addition to some cancer operations that can’t wait. Elective operations like those for hernia repair, nonurgent gall bladder, small benign masses were put on hold. At the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, what was considered essential was an immediate threat of 48 hours. The time has since expanded markedly. Ching’s clinic has reopened.
“Now that we’re starting back up again, things overall seem calmer and everyone seems to feel a lot safer,” Ching said. “But now we have this backlog of patients that were put on hold and some emergency patients that hadn’t wanted to go into the hospital before. So it has been a bit of a rush.
“A lot of my job is kind of balancing risk versus benefit. Every time we do an operation it’s a risk. You weigh it against the benefit. That’s kind of what is going on with COVID, right? The risk of us going back to life as normal vs. what are you doing to decrease that risk.”
McQuain works in the neonatal ICU at St. Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City. She cares for premature babies 22 weeks and beyond.
“Our youngest was 21 and six days,” McQuain said. “She was all over the news.”
Ellie Schneider, now 2 and healthy after a series of health issues, and her mom, Robin, were introduced by President Trump in February during his State of the Union Address.
McQuain got her degree in health science at Quinnipiac and enrolled in nursing school at William Jewell College a few months later. She is finishing her master’s program to become a nurse practitioner and said she will remain in the neonatal unit as a provider.
With premature babies, there already is already a level of anxiety. COVID-19 only adds to this.
“Babies haven’t really been getting coronavirus, but obviously you have to take precautions if the moms are positive,” McQuain said. “If a mom is positive and gives birth, that baby goes into a negative-pressure room. You have to wear eyewear, an N95 with a Level 1 mask over that, gloves. Until the baby’s test comes back negative or positive, they stay in that room. If they’re positive, we treat them there.”
With COVID-19, McQuain said, the nurse who helps admit the baby usually stays with that baby until discharge to limit exposure. Visitation is limited. Precautions everywhere.
“As far as my workflow I was always was so confident, it was like muscle memory,” McQuain said. “Now you have to stop and think and make sure of everything.
“In the past, I would come in and give my boyfriend a hug when I came through the door with my scrubs on. Now I won’t touch anything.”
She takes off her shoes, enters her apartment, turns into a laundry closet, immediately puts her clothes in hot water.
“I don’t know what could be on me today,” said McQuain, originally from Independence, Missouri. “It’s not like flu where you can kind of remedy it out.
“I’m not scared to do my job. I’m a nurse. I’ve been exposed to infectious disease. I’m not terrified to do my job. I’m terrified of getting anyone sick. If I wasn’t in school right now, I’d love to take a travel job to the East Coast and help with COVID patients. My fear is getting others sick. I have brothers and sisters and my mom who I haven’t spent a lot of time with because I might be an asymptomatic carrier.”
At 6 feet, McQuain surpassed 1,000 points, 1,000 rebounds and 100 blocks at Quinnipiac. She was a force inside. Now, she handles tiny babies with the skill of a great point guard.
“I’m so proud to have played for Quinnipiac,” she said. “I tell patients about it. It helped me be patient and strong at important times. Yeah, 2013 was definitely the highlight for me.”
Seven years later, in the midst of a scared world, we should stop and highlight McQuain and Dr. Ching and the rest who took on a life of medical and emergency care to save us, our parents and our children.
“That is nice, but in the back of your head you’re wondering, well, when this is over will it go back to the way it was?” Ching said. “I kind of think it will. But none of us really got into it for the recognition. Otherwise, we’d be doing something else.”