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Nurse anesthetist Christine King discusses her article, “The heartbreaking pandemic story I will never forget.” Reflecting on the COVID-19 pandemic five years later, she shares the profound impact of collective trauma through personal and professional lenses. Christine recounts a moving encounter with a musician patient who endured extreme isolation and depression during the pandemic, revealing that only his responsibility towards his cats kept him from suicide. She discusses the emotional toll on health care workers, including witnessing troubling shifts in colleagues’ attitudes towards the pandemic’s severity and vaccine science due to misinformation, alongside her own grief from losing her mother during visitor restrictions and feelings of betrayal over community vaccine refusal. Despite the lingering pain and disillusionment, Christine holds onto hope for a future with more mutual listening, trust in science, and appreciation for one another.

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Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast. Today we welcome Christine King. She’s a nurse anesthetist. Today’s KevinMD article is “The heartbreaking pandemic story I will never forget.” Christine, welcome to the show.

Christine King: Thank you. Thank you very much.

Kevin Pho: All right, so tell us a little about your story briefly, and then the article that you wrote on KevinMD for those that didn’t get a chance to read it.

Christine King: Sure. So I am a nurse anesthetist. I’m based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I was a nurse in critical care for about 12 years. When I went to anesthesia school, it was a personal goal to attain a master’s degree. I wanted to work more autonomously. And it felt like it was the top of the nursing profession, so that’s why I chose that path.

Kevin Pho: All right. And your article is about COVID-19. Tell us your story.

Christine King: Yes well, it was five years ago, so I was reflecting upon that and I’ve seen a lot of articles lately about COVID-19 because we hit the five year mark. And actually, this story occurred after things had kind of settled down. The vaccine was available. This gentleman came in and he just told us this story that was just very, very [impactful]: he was how lonely and isolated he was during the pandemic and how he really had decided that he was going to end his life. And the only thing that kept him alive was the fact that he had cats to take care of at home.

And that got him through. And it just really touched me because he was so vulnerable in that moment. And this was when people were just coming back to start routine testing again, because a lot of people avoided the hospital during the pandemic. And it just made such an impression on me when he told me that story.

Kevin Pho: And what was the setting where he said this? Was he admitted to the hospital and how did he talk?

Christine King: Oh, he was an outpatient for a colonoscopy, a GI procedure. Sure. So it was because during the pandemic we only really took care of inpatients in that department. We didn’t really have outpatients. So it was scary times.

Kevin Pho: So as he was telling you this story about how this patient was thinking about taking his life and the only thing preventing him from doing so were his cats. So as he was relaying the story to you, what was going through your mind?

Christine King: I just felt so much compassion for him because as difficult as things were during the pandemic for health care workers, we went into work every day. We weren’t isolated. We had each other to rely on and to depend on. And there were so many people that didn’t have that. I think the pandemic hit all of us in very different ways, but at least I had the support of my coworkers at that time.

Kevin Pho: So you were a nurse anesthetist. I assume that you did a lot of inpatient procedures, surgeries, critical care things, certainly during the pandemic. What was it like for you during those dark times?

Christine King: It was very difficult because before the vaccine was available you just felt very exposed. One of our GI department usually did about 10 cases a day, 10 to 12 cases a day. And one of the doctors said, out of the 10 patients we’re taking care of today, one of them will probably be COVID positive and not know it. We took a lot of precautions but we were still, even though that is our job to take care of people, we were still exposed to something that really wasn’t well known at all. And we were coming home to our families and had to find a way to protect them as well, which made it difficult too.

Kevin Pho: And how did that whole experience living through COVID and all the uncertainty through COVID, how did that change you as a clinician?

Christine King: I think it changed me in a lot of ways. I was very surprised at how many of my coworkers and clinicians in general became very anti-mask and very anti-vaccine very, very quickly because when the vaccine first came out, there was so much relief in the hospital. Just this, I remember people posting on social media about how relieved they were and about how happy they were to finally have this, because it was a long time between March and end of December, beginning of January when that was available, and how quickly that changed. And that surprised me a lot. I did not expect that.

Kevin Pho: And you could almost say that it’s a reflection, of course, of our greater society, where right now there’s just a lot of skepticism against the vaccines, a lot of skepticism towards masking. And in a way there’s a lot of loss of trust in our public health institutions and our medical professional institutions. So now that you’ve had time to reflect five years out from COVID, what are you seeing about the attitudes towards health care professionals, towards public health and some of the lessons that the public seems to have learned or not about the whole pandemic experience?

Christine King: Oh, I think that things are fairly bleak. I listened to your podcast yesterday and your guest mentioned violence against health care workers. I think that has gotten much worse, and I do think the pandemic is partially responsible because we went from health care heroes to villains so, so quickly. And I think people, just measles coming back is very, very, very frightening to me. I have twin grandsons who have gotten all their vaccines and I actually printed the CDC schedule of pediatric vaccines because I wasn’t sure when everything changed two months ago. I wasn’t sure if that information was going to be available and I wanted to make sure that we had it.

I think COVID vaccine skepticism has become mainstream. Even the Novavax vaccine, which is a different mechanism that people are suspicious of that. That’s more of a traditional vaccine thing. People are very suspicious of it. COVID hasn’t gone away. Measles is coming back. H1N1 is in the background. And I still think that the supply chain is not ready for another pandemic to come down the line. And I don’t know, because everything’s been cut if people are even tracking that anymore. It’s very difficult. Things are changing very fast and it’s very frightening to me.

Kevin Pho: So are you personally witnessing some of that hostility and some of that anti-medicine sentiment during your normal day as a nurse anesthetist? Are you seeing that personally?

Christine King: I don’t think, I think most of the patients that come into the hospital are very, very happy to have the care that they receive. OK. I have pulled back a lot from friendships in the workplace because of that type of opinion. I am starting to call things out like I was in a social situation where people started to not necessarily say anything about the vaccines, but they were talking about masks in general. And I work in an OR; we wear masks all the time. So to hear someone say masks don’t work, I am starting to speak out respectfully, but just say to people, if you have surgery, I would wear a mask in the room for you to prevent infection. We’ve done that for a hundred years, well before the pandemic. Or specifically the COVID pandemic. So, I am starting to respectfully call people out for their views sometimes.

Kevin Pho: As you said, it’s costing you your personal relationships with some people.

Christine King: Absolutely. I have family members that have really been very, really cut me out of their life and friendships that really have just changed. They’re not the same.

Kevin Pho: And that’s purely because of differing stances when it comes to things like masking and vaccines?

Christine King: Absolutely, yes. So I have found a group of people who are supportive of it and it’s just changed so much. I never expected the amount of change.

Kevin Pho: Do you see a path forward for those who have lost trust in medical professionals and lost trust in public health? Do you see a path forward to perhaps sway them back, like you said, for the next pandemic?

Christine King: I think one thing is the service you provide with your website and with this podcast because I think journalists in general are communication majors and they don’t understand the medical system and they don’t understand how things work in health care. And to have experts that are able to kind of explain those concepts to the general public, instead of a journalist who’s trying to figure out how that works and communicate it, I think that type of thing is going to help.

And I also, and it’s unfortunate, but I think that as more people get sick and are affected by not having these vaccines, that it’s going to change a lot of minds too. And that’s unfortunate that it has to come to that.

Kevin Pho: I completely agree with you when you say that because when it’s online and on social media, it’s very easy to be polarized because everyone is in their own individual silos. But when it’s face to face, like you said, you haven’t witnessed a lot of personal animosity against you when you’re face-to-face with patients, for the most part, they’re very appreciative of the care they receive, and that’s my stance as well. Whenever I talk to patients even if they don’t agree with things like vaccines and masks, it’s always a very civil discussion, and at least it gives me the opportunity to plant that seed in their mind that perhaps the next time this happens again, they may reconsider.

Christine King: And I agree with that because again, with the mask conversation, when people are just thinking about masks in response to COVID it’s different. But when you say, oh, we wear them in the OR all the time and always have to protect you, to protect you from infection, I think that does make an impact because it makes people think, OK, well we’re using this in a different circumstance and they do work. So, it just gives them a different perspective.

Kevin Pho: In your article you wrote about the phrase, ‘I’m glad that you’re still here’ and it hits different now, five years from the pandemic, so tell us more about that.

Christine King: I just, this gentleman was just so vulnerable and I just felt that he really needed to hear that. Somebody, even a stranger was happy that he was there and he had somebody to talk to. Because I think really at the end of the day, all we have is being kind to each other, and that makes a huge, huge difference. So I think we have to have more of that in the future. No, we’re not going to agree on everything, but we can be kind when we talk to each other about our differences.

Kevin Pho: And as health care professionals, we’re in a unique position to do that because a lot of times in primary care, when they come see me for their appointment, it’s really the social highlight of their day. Not to say that anyone’s in anyone’s social highlight, but a lot of times when I ask them what else do they have to do today, really coming in to see me, to see the physician is all they’re doing socially that day. So it does give us a unique opportunity.

Christine King: Oh, absolutely. I think there’s even without the pandemic, I think people in general are really lonely and I noticed that too. You can always tell an older person who hasn’t had a person to talk to for a long time because they really want to have a deep conversation with you.

Kevin Pho: Now from a behavioral health standpoint, you mentioned all the emotional turmoil and stress that health care professionals had gone through during the pandemic. They were at first heroes and now they’re in some cases villains. How do you yourself manage that and talk about some of the support that you have needed or gone through to help make it through the pandemic era from a behavioral health standpoint?

Christine King: Well, I journaled a lot through the pandemic effect. In preparation for this today, I was leafing through it and just some of the things that happen. It’s amazing how you forget even in five years how much you actually forget. And therapy helped. So that’s, I’m a big believer in that.

Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Christine King. She’s a nurse anesthetist. Today’s KevinMD article is “The heartbreaking pandemic story I’ll never forget.” Christine, let’s end with some take home messages that you wanna leave with the KevinMD audience.

Christine King: I think that I’m going to go back to just be kind and also there is a public good that we have to be aware of. And yes, individualism is important, but we also have an obligation to look after each other.

Kevin Pho: Thank you so much for sharing your story, perspective and insight, and thanks again for coming on the show.

Christine King: Thank you very much.