‘Anyone can get it.’ KC doctor shares story of his dad’s COVID-19 death to help others
Just days after losing his father to COVID-19, Luke Wilson has a message to share. Not just for the Kansas City area, but for the world.
“This needs to be relayed over and over again,” Wilson, an area physician, told The Star on Tuesday. “It’s in our community, and anyone can get it. Anyone can contract the virus, and anybody can spread the virus.”
Dennis Wilson, 74, of Lenexa, died Saturday morning, five days after tests confirmed he had coronavirus. His is the first death to be reported in Johnson County.
Luke Wilson said his father’s story is a wake-up call for anyone who thinks they won’t contract the virus.
“A couple months ago, when we knew this virus was coming and when Washington state had the tragedies that they had, I’m a physician and I’m thinking the most at-risk group is the elderly,” he said.
But he thought that those most susceptible were nursing home patients.
“I’m not thinking my neighbor in church or my father,” Luke said. “I’m not thinking of the 70-ish-year-old male who might have a touch of diabetes or might have a touch of heart disease or hypertension. Because those people don’t look sick and they don’t act sick and they’re very, very vibrant.”
Just like his dad, Luke said.
“He was 74. He had lean muscle mass, he was normal weight,” he said. “He was a relatively newly diagnosed, diet- controlled type 2 diabetic, so he didn’t need medicine for that. He had survived prostate cancer about 10, 12 years prior to that and he’d had coronary artery bypass grafting 30 years ago and was being followed by a cardiologist for that, but his heart was good. He never smoked, had no history with lung issues, no asthma.”
When the Kansas Department of Health and Environment announced the death — the agency doesn’t reveal the victims’ names — it said the man who died had underlying health conditions.
Luke Wilson worries that description could give people a false sense of security about who is most vulnerable.
“I thought the Kansas Department of Health was not purposely misleading, but it was somewhat misinformation,” he said. “Everybody at that age has underlying health conditions. People in their 60s, 70s and 80s have co-morbidities, but they could be perfectly healthy.”
Luke said he first learned that his dad wasn’t feeling well when he got a call on March 12. Luke and his son had just landed in Phoenix to go golfing over spring break.
“He said, ‘I’ve been feeling ill, I feel like I have the flu, I’ve had chills and I just don’t feel good,’” Luke said. “With this whole coronavirus thing I was like, ‘Dad, where have you been?’ He said, ‘I haven’t been anywhere. ‘ He said he went to an urgent care and they said he had a virus and they sent him home.”
His dad said he’d been running a low-grade fever, so Luke told him to take some Tylenol and some ibuprofen and he’d check back with him the next day. But his mom called the next day and said his dad wasn’t better, didn’t look well and wasn’t eating.
“My mom is a retired nursing home administrator and a trained nurse,” Luke said. “And she said, ‘I’m really worried about him.’”
He told her to call the University of Kansas Hospital and ask what to do. She called back and said they told her to bring him in. Luke assumed she took him to the emergency room, but they went to a KU urgent care clinic.
They tested Dennis Wilson for Influenza A and B and he was negative for both, Luke said.
“I don’t think he was running a fever, partly because I had told him to take Tylenol and ibuprofen,” he said. “So they sent him home. And by the way, there’s nothing wrong with the medical care he received, because nobody knew. Nobody suspected.”
Late on March 15, Luke got a call from an emergency room doctor he knows at AdventHealth in Lenexa.
“He said, ‘I’m looking at your dad. He doesn’t look that bad, but we did a chest X-ray and I’m really worried about him.’
“He went downhill really fast, from calling me a couple days prior and telling me he feels like he’s got the flu to just a couple days later he was in the emergency department with bilateral pneumonia,” Luke said.
They did a COVID-19 test at the ER, he said, and took his dad by ambulance to AdventHealth’s main campus in Overland Park.
Within hours, he was put on a ventilator with severe ARDS — acute respiratory distress syndrome, Luke said.
The COVID-19 test was completed quickly, he said, and KDHE called the hospital to confirm his dad had coronavirus.
“When he tested negative for the flu, I was concerned, because we knew it was popping up in places by community spread,” Luke said. “We knew it wasn’t just these at-risk areas that were being affected. So I was concerned that he had it, because he just doesn’t ever get sick.”
Over the next several days, his father’s condition “got worse and worse,” Luke said.
“He just couldn’t fight it.”
Luke isn’t sure if earlier testing would have saved his dad’s life.
“I don’t know if it would have made a difference, because they intubated him real quickly as soon as he started to have respiratory issues,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anything they could have done that they didn’t do. The staff did an amazing job of treating him. I couldn’t be any happier with the medical care he got. They tried every medicine available.”
But earlier testing could potentially have saved others from being infected, Luke said.
“He became sick on March 9,” he said. “While he was symptomatic and undiagnosed, he was going to urgent cares and an ER and spreading the virus to health care workers and whatever other patients were in those waiting rooms.”
Luke Wilson noted that his father “fits the anecdotes.”
“He’s male, he’s elderly, he has some mild underlying health conditions but nothing that make him unhealthy,” he said. “He also is Type A blood type, which they say puts you at more risk for more serious symptoms from this virus.
“It could be totally anecdotal, but my mom lived with him and has no symptoms, she’s not Type A blood, and she’s a woman.”
The family doesn’t know exactly how or when Dennis Wilson was infected, Luke said. About the only places he’d recently been were to church, Home Depot — he was tiling a bathroom at home — and a monthly meeting of local magicians. For the past 25 years, Wilson had been a hobby magician, performing on stage and for corporate events, private functions, festivals, fairs and school fundraisers.
He was a member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians’ Ring 129, the organization’s Kansas City-area chapter. Wilson attended the group’s monthly meeting on March 5 at a Merriam hotel as well as a lecture on March 3 at a business in Overland Park. Ring 129 president David Sandy told The Star on Tuesday that he’d heard of no others attending either meeting who had become sick.
“We had a board meeting on March 12,” Sandy said, “but we decided not to meet in person but have a conference call. I texted Dennis, but he said he wouldn’t be coming anyway because he had the flu.”
Luke said his mom is now in self-quarantine at home, as is his younger sister. His younger brother is just coming out of quarantine.
“The last contact my family had with my dad was February 27, so we were not in the window,” he said. “In my household, we’ve kept my wife’s parents isolated. We’re socially distancing. If we thought this was just happening to people with underlying health problems, if we didn’t know any better, we might not social distance from our parents. But it’s very important that we protect our parents. They are the most at-risk, but they don’t have to be unhealthy to be at-risk.”
Luke said he and his siblings weren’t allowed to see their dad once he was in the hospital.
“But I did get to Facetime him twice when he was in ICU,” he said. “That’s the other heartbreaking part of this disease. Your loved ones are isolated. It’s a terrible way to die, for the family and for the person. We can’t even have a funeral for him now.”
His mother, he said, “has her good moments and her bad moments.” Joanna Wilson has been praised for educating the public about the virus through updates on her husband’s condition that she posted on her Facebook page last week.
“The community has been so supportive of her, leaving flowers and meals at her doorstep,” Luke said. “It’s been awesome.”
Dennis Wilson was a graduate of Fort Scott High School who studied biology at Pittsburg State University and at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He later got a doctorate in school administration from the University of Kansas. A former teacher and principal, he served as superintendent of La Crosse USD 395 in west-central Kansas, Labette County USD 506 in southeast Kansas and Lamar R-1 School District in southwest Missouri.
“My brother is a physician assistant,” Luke said, “and he made the comment that my dad taught him about microbiology, and it was a microbe that took my dad’s life.
“It’s ironic, right? But the positive message is that my dad by trade was a teacher. And even in death, he’s teaching people to keep themselves safe from this virus.”
This story was originally published March 24, 2020 at 4:48 PM.
