Mills County Couple Combats COVID-19 As VA Nurses
The spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus is having a big impact on the lives of Chris Killion and his wife Denee – at work and on the home front.
The Killions, who reside in Malvern, are both Registered Nurses at the Veterans Administration (VA) Medical Center in Omaha. Chris, has worked in the VA’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU) for eight years and is now on the frontline of patient treatment in the hospital’s COVID ICU, while Denee is assigned to the Cardiac Catherization Lab.
Chris, a 1988 Glenwood Community High School graduate and former member of the Iowa National Guard, earned his nursing degree from Park University in Kansas City and has been an ICU nurse for 28 years. He is one of the most experienced ICU nurses on the VA staff.
“My job is kind of two-fold,” he said. “I’m caring directly for our veteran COVID patients and I’m also trying to get our younger, less-experienced nurses up to speed on caring for patients who are acutely ill.”
Denee, a Kansas native and a graduate of Missouri Western College, has been a nurse since 1997. She began working at the VA in 2009 as an ICU nurse and moved to the Cardiac Cath Lab in 2015. Although she’s not working directly with patients in the COVID unit, the threat for exposure to the disease is very real.
“We know with our jobs there, there is always a risk we might get sick, but this (COVID-19) is just so different and this disease is just so much more vehement,” she said. “It’s been very scary, honestly.”
The spread of the coronavirus has created an “intense” environment at the hospital, Chris said, and the implementation of preventive protocols and safety measures established to protect patients and staff. Standard PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) include gloves, face mask, gown and a PAPR (Powered Air-Purfying Respirator), designed to safeguard workers against contaminated air.
“It’s a hood you wear over your head,” Chris said. “It seals itself around your neck and back of your head. It’s positively pressurized so that it keeps any viral or bacterial infection out of the mask itself because air is always blowing out.”
The utilization of PAPRs and other forms of PPE are among the changes that have been put into place at hospitals around the world because of the pandemic. Those changes include a stoppage of elective surgeries and more outpatient care, all in an effort to limit and prevent possible exposure and spread of the virus. At the VA, many patients are receiving “telemedicine” consultation over the telephone.
Chris said southwest Iowa, eastern Nebraska and other areas of the Midwest have been fortunate, up to this point, because the hospitals have been proactive in preparing for the virus.
“We just haven’t had anything clustered, yet, in the city of Omaha. We’ve been very lucky,” he said. “In the Midwest, we started socially isolating and following precautions at a much lower and earlier point on our curve than the east and west coasts had a chance to. We’re fortunate, the hospitals have been very proactive in using this period to get prepared for when our possible peak occurs.”
Although his work is demanding, Chris said he’s inspired by the patients he treats – military veterans who have served their country. The VA faces the challenge of keeping medical care available to all veterans at its medical facilities while at the same time taking precautions to prevent spread of the virus.
“We have to be very cognizant to be able to provide care for our veterans who need us most and do that while minimizing the risk to the veterans who need us every single day,” Chris said. “Hospitals don’t just get to go away and stop for patients on a routine basis, but we really have to control the flow through the hospital itself. It’s been a challenge on every level of the hospital.”
COVID-19 has not only impacted the Killions in their workplace, but also at home. Chris and Denee have three daughters – Sloane (23), Aleah (18) and Molly (15).
“I think about it 24/7. It’s been very scary for us,” Denee said. “We have more life insurance now than we used to and we got our wills fixed – things we should have had outlined a little better at our age. We definitely have had our mortality thrown in our face the last month.”
In addition to taking personal safety precautions when returning home from a shift at work, Denee said both she and Chris have sought out ways to relieve mental stress.
“I think we’ve both been working on things to do outside of work,” she said. “I’ve been journaling. I’ve been doing some meditation – just things to calm my mind down. It is on our minds 24/7.”
Chris, 50, and Denee, 47, said they aren’t “your typical called to care for people nurses.”
Chris started out as a struggling computer science major in college and Denee was studying psychology when she took a series of personality tests that all suggested nursing would be a compatible profession.
“I had never given it much thought, but I’ve always been kind of a caretaker type of person, so it really does fit my personality perfectly,” she said. “I do feel, even though I took kind of a roundabout way to get here, I was meant to be a nurse. I can’t imagine doing anything else.”
Chris and Denee met when both were working as nurses at Heartland Regional Medical Center in St. Joseph, Mo. They married and eventually moved to Mills County. Both took jobs at Creighton University Medical Center and Chris later worked as a traveling nurse before landing at the VA. Their daughter Aleah is now studying to be a nurse and also works at the VA as a certified nursing assistant.
Their nursing careers have been gratifying for both Chris and Denee, but both struggle with the idea of being called a “hero” for the difficult and dangerous work they do, even during a global pandemic.
“We were just talking today about people calling us heroes and thanking us,” Denee said. “It’s surreal, I guess. It makes me feel uncomfortable because I’m just doing my job, but at the same time I know there’s that fear that’s different than anything we’ve ever experienced in our careers.”