PRHC RN Kailin Wilson On Her Experience Being Redeployed To The ICU During Pandemic & Impact On Family
/In the third of a PTBOCanada series on the experiences of frontline healthcare workers in Peterborough produced by Mary Zita Payne, RN Kailin Wilson gives us a firsthand look on what it’s like being on the frontlines during the pandemic. Here is her experience in her own words…
February 2020. I wake up every morning to my children, I don’t start work for another 1-2 hours. I get them ready, fed and off to daycare and school. I have no anxiety, no pit in my stomach. I enjoy my job and I am excited to be at work doing what I love.
Fast forward to March 2020. I get the phone call that I am being redeployed to the ICU. It’s not foreign to me, I have worked there before. What is foreign is the fear and the anguish that comes over me. My first thoughts are, ‘My husband is a front-line shift worker, how are we going to do this?' Thankfully, his job has been more than understanding. I am going to have to adapt to a new kind of normal.
Kailin Wilson (photographed at PRHC by Mary Zita Payne)
My first day in ICU, I wake up with an unrelenting pit in my stomach. I’m nervous and rightfully so. My husband and I have come up with a plan of how I am going to return home. I will change in the garage, leave my belongings there and shower right away. I won’t pick up the kids from daycare because it is too risky to have them in such close contact with me. This is going to kill me I think—all I want to do after a hard day is hug my babies.
I’m not sure how I am going to feel going into this, I haven’t done it before. I have never cared for a patient that has or is suspected to have COVID-19. I walk into work and am asked a series of questions upon entering.
Everything is different at work.
Nobody is close because of physical distancing; we are all wearing masks and we try our hardest while caring for our patients to preserve PPE. None of this is normal. As nurses, we aren’t taught or programmed to limit our exposure, to make it worth our while to go into these rooms, “group our care” if you will.
Photographed at PRHC by Mary Zita Payne
I have never worried about the germs I bring home to my children. My background is the recovery room. Most patients are healthy, otherwise surgery would be cancelled. While I am at work, in the thick of this pandemic, the last thing on my mind is my anxiety or concerns.
My main focus is giving this patient the best possible care that I can. This is someone’s husband or wife, mom or dad. I care for them as if they were mine. But when I’m driving home from work, all of my anxiety and my greatest fear comes rushing over me.
Photographed at PRHC by Mary Zita Payne
What if I wasn’t safe enough? What if I didn’t have my N95 respirator sealed tight enough? What if the hand sanitizer I use multiple times a day didn’t do its job?
You see, my daughter was very sick as a baby.
She required ICU care at Sick Kids, which left her lungs with chronic inflammation. I can’t help but have this in the back of my mind. I mean, her favourite thing to do is to be with her mom all the time. How do you explain to a three-year-old to “physically distance” herself?
Nobody is perfect. No amount of PPE is going to protect us all from this virus. It doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t care how healthy you are or how old you are. My biggest message to everyone is to follow the guidelines the government has set out for us. It is imperative that we as a community and country follow the rules if we want any sort of “normal” to return.
Photographed at PRHC by Mary Zita Payne
