Christiara Deese: COVID-19, loss made nurse reevaluate how to treat patients with kindness

WATERLOO — Christiara Deese had multiple opportunities to not follow through with her nursing career, but the setbacks made her an even better care provider.

Deese, 30, is a nurse for Care Initiatives Inc. She’s been a registered nurse for two years. She received 53 nominations for The Courier’s Cedar Valley Top 10 Nurses honor.

“(She’s) a phenomenal nurse, passionate about her career and more importantly passionate about her patients,” a nomination read. “Christiara will always be a guiding light for the community she serves. Whether it’s her lovable, cheerful, bubbly personality or fiery persistence, a person will know they are in great hands.”

Deese said she was excited and happy to receive so many nominations.

“In nursing, you’d be so overwhelmed because of the staff (levels) and it’s just complex to take care of humans, so sometimes you’ll just be so overwhelmed,” she said, saying a lot of efforts go unrecognized because people above her are also overwhelmed. “It’s hard for them, and you’ve got patients going through a lot healthwise, so it’s hard for them to appreciate what you’re doing. So to get to be appreciated for being a nurse and people seeing your hard work that is amazing.”

She learned she wanted to be a nurse from the other women in her life – her mother and sisters.

“I really like to care for people, you know, so that’s what I like about being a nurse,” Deese said, adding that she got the trait from her mom. “She cared for people so much; she would do anything for anybody. She should have been a nurse.”

She also said that while growing up her sisters were certified nursing assistants and they would take care of her ailing dad. Her dad died by the time Deese received her CNA certification.

Another major death happened in her family while she was studying to be a registered nurse. Her sister died in December 2020 from COVID-19.

Deese said her sister was flown into the University of Iowa to get an emergency C-section for her baby and then, two weeks later, she was on a ventilator. Her sister’s funeral was a week before nursing school finals – which Deese passed.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the loss of her sister made her reevaluate how she treats her patients.

When the first case hit in March 2020, Deese was one of the few nurses at her facility to not fear the virus.

“(People) would refuse to go in COVID-positive people’s rooms, and I’m like ‘I’m not going to do that; it’s not their fault that they have it’,” she said. “And we got our first COVID-positive resident at the nursing home. It was like nobody wanted to go in. Everybody was scared.”

She and two CNAs went in to help the first affected patient.

“I think about my sister,” she said. “What if the paramedics didn’t want to come get her because she was COVID-positive? Or what if they didn’t want to go in there and help her because she was COVID-positive?”

“I treat other people how I want somebody to do me. I don’t refuse to do a certain care because the person got a certain disease or a certain something,” she continued. “I try to treat people as if it were my grandma, my sister, laying there.”

Deese faced challenges along the way that could have derailed her career path. Those ranged from the difficulties of a childhood growing up with a drug-addicted father to paying her tuition out of pocket and having three kids by the time she finished up her RN certification.

Her perseverance has inspired many of her friends to attend nursing school.

“I tell my friends, like, there’s no excuse if I can do it,” she said. “I literally feel like anybody could do it because it was so hard.”

When not at work, Deese lives with her boyfriend, DJ, and four children – Kamyah, Caylee, Dameer and Jaceer – in Cedar Falls.