Before the pandemic, a normal day for Lieutenant Aaron Chambers included surgery one or two days a week and evaluation and treatment of patients’ foot issues. But since the COVID-19 pandemic reached our shores, the St. Louis native, Navy Medical Service Corps officer, and podiatrist assigned to Naval Medicine Readiness and Training Command Bremerton, in Bremerton, Washington, has begun screening patients for COVID-19 at the naval hospital, located across Puget Sound from Seattle, a hot spot for the virus.
Chambers says answering 3 a.m. calls for emergency surgery as a resident prepared him for the pandemic: He expects the unexpected. But even though the surge in cases was a scary time, he says it’s gratifying to see how appreciative of his service the community has been.
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“The people I’m seeing, the people who I’m talking to in their cars, you can see the relief in their eyes,” he says. “They know that they have a place to go. I know personally, that’s a really big relief for me, too. This is a place I can go to where people care, and they’re going to take care of me.”
