By Dale Singer
Kasi Gardner wasn’t sure she was going to get the COVID vaccine, but once she decided to go ahead, she urged all of Ohio to follow her lead.
A meeting with Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine helped change her mind. Gardner, a recent graduate of Maryville’s online graduate post MSN family nurse practitioner program, said that when she was thinking about whether to get the COVID vaccine, she had pretty much made up her mind when she heard that DeWine would be coming to her hospital in Springfield, Ohio, in mid-December.
She got the shot that day, as part of the governor’s appearance, and a couple of weeks later she was asked to be part of a statewide commercial urging all Ohio residents to join her.
Gardner’s initial concerns stemmed mainly from the fact that the vaccine was approved so quickly, so she wondered whether it had been tested adequately. But once she researched the question, and saw how badly patients were suffering from the disease, Gardner decided to protect herself as well as her family, friends and patients.
“I did not want to inadvertently give it to someone else,” she said of the virus. “I worried about my family. During the pandemic, I obviously didn’t have a choice about whether or not I would be working with COVID patients, so I couldn’t have it be a situation that I would bring it home to my husband or my mother or other relatives.
“Once I processed all of that, I realized I had to step up and get the vaccine, so I did.” A photo of Gardner getting the shot appeared in a local newspaper. How does she think such publicity affects people who may cringe at the sight of a needle?
“I guess you can argue either way,” she said. “I kind of look at it as one of things we do even with kids. Mommy is going to do it first, or Daddy is going to do it first, and you can show a kid that Mommy and Daddy are okay. So I think it’s going to be a positive.”
Gardner says she understands people who remain resistant to the vaccine, but she says they need to continue wearing a mask and remain socially distant, to combat further spread of a disease that is proving tough to defeat. “Otherwise,” she said, “all that hard work will end up being for naught.”
Her brief moment of fame was interesting, she added.
“It was so awesome,” Gardner said, “that so many people in my family said that because they saw me in the commercial, they were going to get the vaccine because Kasi got it.”
Gardner was working as a staff nurse in the step-down unit at the Springfield, Ohio, Regional Medical Center when she signed up for the Maryville course, before the pandemic hit. She said the university offered just what he was looking for to become a nurse practitioner.
Now, her new credentials, plus her experience in the commercial, can help her reach more people in a different way. In the end, she said, it’s all about helping.
“To me,” Gardner said, “it’s a courtesy to someone else. In our society, we’re not necessarily thinking about the other person. But we have to start.”