SFCC graduate pivots focus to medicine after seeing pandemic’s impact on local tribes

Mary Ann Matheson saw firsthand how the COVID-19 pandemic devastated her people on the Colville Indian Reservation.

A member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, she previously lived there and worked as a certified nursing assistant at the Coulee Medical Center. During the first half of 2020, she witnessed patients and tribal members who felt isolated.

People had more difficulties getting in to see doctors at the reservation’s clinics, while mental health issues rose, and with them, deaths and suicides, she said.

“I think a lot of the people who I knew personally, who died during COVID, maybe they didn’t necessarily have COVID, but it just seemed like everybody got so sad,” said Matheson, 27. “A lot of people committed suicide, there were overdoses, and it was terrible.”

Taking a Spokane job later in 2020, she saw similar trends – all pivoting her career choice from teaching to becoming a nurse. She eventually wants to offer health services for local tribes.

Matheson graduated in June from Spokane Falls Community College with an associate’s degree in pre-nursing. The single mom now lives with her son Caspian Paul, 6, on the Coeur d’Alene Reservation with her father. She grew up there until her parents divorced when she was 6.

She has applied to Washington State University’s College of Nursing for next spring.

She’s aware some elders died with COVID, and some younger people in her extended family had COVID and died. “They went to sleep and didn’t wake up,” she said.

“There were older people who just got really lonely. There were young people who were dying at home. I think it was happening everywhere, but it was strange because on the reservation, we all know each other.

“I noticed all the patients – they also have a long-term care section in the hospital because it’s really small – they couldn’t see their family. It was really sad, the isolation. I realized that in health care, sometimes you’re one of the only people who the patient will see. Even without COVID, there are people who don’t have family close. That touched my heart a little bit and made me want to be there.”

Later in 2020, she took a job at the House of Charity for a little over a year. She said that also made her more aware of health problems among the homeless.

Matheson has worked as a CNA at Deaconess Hospital’s oncology department since July 2021, where she also hopes to learn more about the disease because of a family member who has lung cancer. Beyond receiving physical care, she thinks patients need to have a connection.

“It helps to know that there is someone who cares more than skin deep, or even bone deep. I realized at that point during COVID that I really just care a lot about people. I still wouldn’t mind being a teacher, but I just feel like I’m better at doing what I’m doing now. I want to keep going down the path with health care.”

Matheson initially pursued elementary education at WSU in Pullman with hopes of becoming a kindergarten teacher.

“Then I had some things happen in my family and in my life, and I guess I didn’t have to drop out, but I did. I had my son a year and half after that. I was a stay-at-home mom for almost a year, then I was going a little stir-crazy just being home.”

She got her CNA training at the Coulee Medical Center in summer of 2017 through a tribal program. She went on to work in a nursing home and a skilled nursing facility for the tribe, then at a hospital close to the reservation.

“They’ve really been supportive of me,” Matheson said.

She started SFCC classes in January 2021, juggling work, being a single mom and spending more time with family.

Matheson also became involved with SFCC’s Red Nations Club, which focuses on Native American culture and beliefs. This year, Matheson helped organize the college’s annual Pow Wow, which draws in tribes from around the region – including the Coeur d’Alene and Colville tribes, and some from Montana and Canada.

She thinks that if she’s accepted into WSU nursing, it will require two more years of study.

“I keep thinking of all the different things I could do with a nursing degree because there are all kinds of nursing, but for sure I want to be a nurse who helps my people,” she said.

That extends beyond her tribe, though.

“I don’t mean my people just in my tribe or, like, my family, but any people who I come into contact with. I just want to be there.

“But especially in the future, I do want to get back to my tribe because I want to give back to the community that raised me, gave me everything that I could have needed to get to where I am today to be successful, and just make it a healthy place.”

When COVID hit, many elders felt it was almost impossible to see care providers on the reservation, where she still visits her grandparents, Matheson said. At the same time, access to mental health services narrowed.

“For the reservation that I grew up on at least, there are different districts and each district has their own clinic, but there really is just, like, one doctor or nurse practitioner for the whole reservation,” Matheson added.

The doctor would go to the different clinics throughout the week and take on a patient load that spanned the reservation, Matheson said – part of the reason it could be so hard to get an appointment.

In the past, she said there was a pattern of doctors or nurse practitioners who didn’t stay long at the clinics, perhaps only as long as a scholarship required. That also has inspired her eventually to return and stay – either as a nurse, or perhaps later, a nurse practitioner.

“I feel like we need someone who is from there who understands the culture, what people might have to go through, and somebody who wants to stay there to be consistent and care for our people.”