Nenia Ballard built a career on showing up. As a police officer in Canaan, she found purpose in being present for her community, in doing the physical, demanding work of public safety. Then long COVID took that ability away. Today Ballard uses a wheelchair, her symptoms have steadily worsened, and the job she loved is behind her. But she has found a new way to contribute, and a new title to carry while she does it. She is Miss Wheelchair New Hampshire, and she is determined to turn a difficult chapter into a platform. As detailed in reporting from the New Hampshire Bulletin, Ballard hopes the recognition can help others the same way it has helped her.
Her story is, in many ways, a New Hampshire story. It runs through a small Upper Valley town, a strained medical system, an uncertain diagnosis, and a stubborn refusal to stop showing up even when the way she contributes has had to change completely.
From the Patrol Car to the Wheelchair
Ballard contracted COVID-19 in 2021, while the pandemic was still raging. What followed did not resolve the way a typical infection does. She began experiencing brain fog, shortness of breath, an elevated heart rate, and, most persistently, profound fatigue. For some people living with long COVID, symptoms settle into a stable, manageable pattern. For Ballard, they have kept getting worse.
She left police work because she no longer felt safe doing such a dangerous job with her symptoms. For a time she was still able to work part time as a grant writer for a Vermont research institute, a job she could do with more flexibility. But by March 2025 her condition had deteriorated to the point that she had to stop working entirely. The progression from full-time officer, to part-time remote work, to leaving the workforce altogether traces the quiet way a chronic illness can reshape an entire life.
A Diagnosis Without a Roadmap
One of the hardest parts of Ballard’s experience has been the absence of certainty. “Everything they can think of, we’ve kind of exhausted,” she said of her treatment options. “Nothing has really worked in terms of giving me a lot of relief.” She has turned to experimental approaches and has now participated in several clinical trials. This month she began a new one with Massachusetts General Hospital, where researchers, suspecting that long COVID may be connected to the gut, are testing a medication originally developed for celiac disease.
“That’s kind of where I’m at as far as just doing experiments,” Ballard said. “And that’s kind of a scary place to be, because you’re just kind of trying things out and hoping. But at the same time, nothing else is working either, so that’s worth a shot.” The hardest part, she said, has been “that there is no path that someone can say, ‘This is how you get better.’” No doctor, she added, will sit down and commit to an answer, because they do not know either, and nobody wants to be wrong.
Much of the experimental care available to patients like Ballard flows through specialized clinics, and in New Hampshire the Post Acute COVID Syndrome Clinic at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon has been a central resource. Founded in the spring of 2021, the clinic has treated hundreds of patients across New Hampshire and Vermont. Its continued operation matters, because long COVID clinics elsewhere in the country have been closing, a retraction in specialized care that advocates link to funding pressures, provider burnout, and shifting institutional priorities. The fragility of rural and specialty health services is a recurring theme in New Hampshire, one we have explored in our coverage of Dartmouth Health’s rural health funding and the state’s broader rural health program priorities.
Ballard is also candid about how the politics surrounding COVID have affected patients. She said the political climate does not help, describing people who still want to make long COVID a political issue, who want to question what causes it or tie it to debates over vaccines. “And that’s not helpful to me either,” she said.
Finding a New Way to Contribute
What sets Ballard apart is what she did with the void that leaving work created. “Trying to find that balance of recovery, but also still having some sort of quality of life has been really difficult, because mental health is still really important too,” she said. “You can’t just do nothing. You can’t just have nothing to look forward to, because that’s not good for your mental health either.”
So she began advocating. The path started with something deeply practical. When she first began using a wheelchair, one of the first things she noticed was how differently her clothes fit. She started reviewing clothing online with wheelchair users in mind, flagging details that able-bodied shoppers never have to consider. The length of a dress matters, she explained, because fabric that is too long can get caught in the front wheels. Too much volume can catch in the side wheels. Both can be dangerous. At nearly six feet tall, she had never worried about someone looking down her shirt while she was standing, but seated and in conversation with someone now towering over her, that became a real consideration when getting dressed.
Those everyday observations grew into something larger. An organization called Miss Wheelchair USA, which seeks to honor people who advocate for accessibility, inclusion, and disability rights, took notice of her videos. She has since been named Miss Wheelchair New Hampshire.
The title fits the way she now lives. “I used to find a sense of accomplishment in the work that I did and giving back to my community through being a police officer, and then I couldn’t do that anymore, so I had to find it other places,” Ballard said. Volunteering, she noted, still requires showing up at specific times and doing things in specific ways that her condition no longer allows. Advocacy is different. “Because so much of it I can do virtually, I can do it when I’m feeling up to it, I can film just short videos when I’m able to, it gives me a way where I can still feel like I’m contributing.”
Why Her Platform Matters in New Hampshire
Ballard’s advocacy lands at a moment when New Hampshire is wrestling with how well its systems serve people with disabilities. From legislative fights over disability protections, such as the debate we covered around a bill targeting abuse in the disability system, to the daily realities of accessibility in housing, transit, and public space, the state’s disability community has been pressing for attention. A visible, articulate advocate who can speak from lived experience adds weight to those conversations.
Her message is not one of resignation. It is about adaptation, and about refusing to let a changed body mean a diminished voice. Ballard has lost the career she loved and is still searching, through clinical trials and hope, for relief that medicine cannot yet promise. In the meantime she has built a new kind of public service, one she can perform from a wheelchair, on her own schedule, in her own voice. For a state that prizes self-reliance, it is a fitting reinvention, and a reminder that contribution takes many forms.
For related coverage, see our reporting on The Cincinnati Career Coach Rewriting the Playbook on Workplace Transitions.
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