Two doctors battle the coronavirus pandemic in KC metro’s hardest-hit county
Doctors Sabato Sisillo and Aman Khan felt helpless.
The pulmonologists at Providence Medical Center in Kansas City, Kansas, were watching their patients die. Beginning in March, when they saw the state’s first coronavirus death, and continuing through weeks of the pandemic, the doctors found themselves devastated and demoralized by the sight of patients they could not heal.
Recently, when a guard at the Lansing prison was admitted to the hospital with the virus, Sisillo spoke optimistically with the man’s wife. He hoped to move the man off of a ventilator in the coming weeks.
Then Sisillo received a late night call. Hospital staff did what they could, but the guard’s condition deteriorated unexpectedly and he died several hours later.
“I get kind of emotional,” Sisillo said, breaking off as he searched for tissues. “If you feel like crying, which I have, you just do. And then you feel better.”
Sisillo, 60, and Khan, 56, lead a medical team in one of the biggest hospitals in Wyandotte County, a part of the state that has seen hundreds of COVID-19 cases and dozens of deaths. The two doctors alternate duties, one spending a week on the floor of the hospital caring for the sickest patients while the other works in the office, following up with those who received care.
Khan, like Sisillo, is used to the intensity of the ICU. But this level of fatigue is new for the colleagues of 15 years.
“You’re watching and you know in your heart that they’re going downhill and there’s nothing you can do to save them,” he said. “You’re basically watching them die.”
From Pakistan to Kansas
In the beginning, Khan, who lives in Overland Park, would reach for his thermometer in the middle of the night to make sure he was still healthy.
When he was a high schooler in Karachi, Pakistan, his 39-year-old father died of a presumed heart attack at an under-resourced hospital. Devastated, Khan decided that day to pursue medicine.
In the first weeks of the epidemic’s infiltration into Wyandotte County, Khan approached a woman to discuss medical interventions in case her husband went into cardiac or respiratory arrest.
Khan almost broke down. These weren’t questions he usually asked loved ones of a 60-year-old.
“I just lost it,” Khan said. “I just felt so depressed.”
The woman, whose husband later died, comforted Khan in that moment.
“Oh honey, you take care of yourself,” he recalled her saying. “I pray for all you healthcare workers and you’re doing the best.”
Khan realized he needed to find a way to stay strong. He found renewed comfort in his family.
Though he’s been staying in the basement of his Overland Park home, away from his spouse and children, Khan still has dinner with them, six feet away.
He and his son play table tennis. He looks forward to evenings with family pickleball competitions on a makeshift court Khan set up in their driveway.
Khan is grateful Providence hasn’t experienced a ventilator shortage. He’s grateful they haven’t been forced to make decisions about who to save and who to let die. He’s grateful for the ICU nurses and respiratory therapists, who he considers the real heroes.
“Hang in there,” he tells them. “Good times will come.”
From Italy to Kansas
At the beginning of the pandemic, Sisillo, who also serves as Providence’s chief medical officer, would often wake up at 3 a.m. His body remained in bed at his Leawood home, but his mind returned to the hospital.
“When I’m in the hospital I’m fine,” he said. “But when I get home everything comes together and then falls.”
He knew he wanted to be a doctor from the time he was nine, when his family left the small town of Pannarano, Italy, for New York. Sisillo spent his early teen years attending lectures on medical discoveries. Sunday mornings were reserved for continuing medical education classes that aired on his parents’ cable TV.
His path into medicine was predictable. The pandemic was not.
Not only is Sisillo shouldering the burden of a medical staff amid a crisis, he’s also fielding questions from patients, nurses and family members that the medical world doesn’t yet have answers to.
At first it was frustrating. Then he decided to focus on putting himself in their shoes. He made a point to be more mindful of their anxiety and stress. He worked to become a more active listener. He began meditating.
“My lens these days is to be more compassionate, loving,” Sisillo said, pulling his surgical mask down briefly to sip from a mug.
He’s also trying to focus on the good: the three patients who were on life-support but have since recovered to the point of coming off ventilators. The hope that a vaccine might be available in the coming months.
Those coming and going from the hospital might find the doctor sprawled out on a nearby bench, soaking up the mid-day sun as he listens to a meditation app.
The father of four also comes home to his girlfriend. He asked her if she was comfortable quarantining with him. She said yes, temporarily giving up seeing her grandchildren in the process.
“To me I’m not a hero,” Sisillo said. “It’s just something I’ve been called to do and I do it and love it.”
