Kevin Campbell, who has served on the Clay County commission for 18 years, is watching COVID-19 numbers explode with a heavy heart. His girlfriend Shelly Swenson is one of almost 60 residents lost so far to the novel coronavirus. Photo/Russ Hanson

Nancy Edmonds Hanson

Kevin Campbell knows catastrophes. He earned his spurs back in 1997 on the Oakport Township board, as he and his neighbors fought the cataclysmic flood that cost billions in economic and property damage. A dozen years later, now a member of the Clay County Commission, he did it all over again.

But nothing, he says, could have prepared him for the worldwide epidemic affecting every corner of the globe today … or the devastating personal consequences that he knows too well.

Campbell, who has served on the county board since 2003, had heard Public Health Officer Kathy McKay’s weekly reports on the inroads the novel coronavirus every Tuesday morning since last March, as she opened the commission’s meetings with what was, at first, a slowly growing toll of positive tests, hospitalizations and deaths. As the summer wore on, the numbers showed modest acceleration. But by early autumn, with the return of college students and easing of business restrictions, he found out in the most intimate of ways: His girlfriend, Shelly Swenson, came home coughing.

“We think she was exposed in her job as a server at a local establishment,” he reflects today. “We went nowhere as a precaution.” By that Friday, her cough was worse, and her doctor arranged a test for COVID-19. It came back on Monday morning: positive.

Her breathing worsened. That night, Kevin brought her to the Sanford Hospital emergency room. She was checked, given several medications to ease her symptoms, and sent home. But by two days later she was struggling to breathe; her blood oxygen level, which should never drop below 90, had dipped to just 70.

“I dropped her off at the hospital at 9 p.m. on Sept. 30,” he says. “That was the last time I got to see her.”

The 56-year-old Moorhead woman was much younger than the group considered most at risk. “Shelly had a little asthma and the very beginnings of emphysema, but she was basically healthy,” Kevin says. “She was very active – she cut the lawn with a hand mower!”

Her condition seemed to stabilize at first, but then worsened. On Oct. 3, her physicians put her on a BiPAP machine – a sort of heavy-duty version of the CPAP – to help her breathe. “She called me on Facetime on Oct. 5. She was scared, and she was panicking,” Kevin recounts. “I was still on that call when the nurses came into her room. I heard them saying they couldn’t stabilize her and so they needed to start sedating her to put her on a ventilator .

“They didn’t realize I was still there on the phone. I called out, ‘Tell me what’s happening.’ A nurse got on and told me, ‘Sorry, I have to end this call.’”

By Oct. 7, Shelly’s nurse-anethesiologist daughter told Kevin the ventilator was not working. She had developed COVID pneumonia in both lungs. Her last chance: the ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) machine, which bypasses the heart and lungs to pump blood back into the body. She was to be flown to the University of Minnesota Hospital. Kevin, who had had his own bout with the virus a few days after Shelly’s diagnosis, got in his truck and followed the ambulance to the Fargo Jet Center, where she was wheeled onto the plane.

“We were so hopeful, but it was one step forward, then two steps back,” he says. “She couldn’t have visitors. By the middle of the month, one of her doctors told me that even if she survived, she might need a trachea tube and feeding tube for the rest of her life.” But that never happened. On Oct. 30, he called again: Her condition was worsening and there was a problem with the ECMO lines. Trying to fix them in her condition would probably be fatal.

Kevin and three of Shelly’s four adult children were allowed to visit her on that last day. Her youngest daughter and Kevin were with her at the end. “We watched her take her last breathe; then two minutes later, I felt her heart stop.” He pauses. “This never gets easier to talk about.”

Shelly was the 46th Clay County resident to die of COVID. Her loss, he says, drives him. “I’m trying to convince these people who think the consequences of this virus are minimal – for them – that they have to take it seriously. For many families – 57 as of now right in Clay County – it’s absolutely devastating.”

He points to a statistic that he finds maddening: Seventy-seven percent of the 5,088 county residents who have tested positive are in the age range of 15 to 44. Yet the number who have died are overwhelmingly older than 65. “That’s where they’re getting it,” he emphasizes. “It’s being spread by younger people who don’t think it’s a big deal.”

They can help turn this catastrophe around. “Those are the same ages that saved us in 1997 and 2009,” he says. “They threw sandbags and built dikes and made all the difference between devastation and being able to celebrate a successful fight. Now they have to understand how much our community needs them again.”

The most basic steps, he notes, are far easier on the back than lifting sandbags. Masks … social distancing … basic hygiene. But there’s one more big contribution he also has in mind.

“Shelly had one treatment with plasma from those who had recovered, but it was in very short supply. Who knows if more could have saved her?” Kevin asks. “Right here in Clay County, we have 4,063 people who have recovered from the virus. They could donate plasma at Vitalant or the Red Cross, and every bit of it would be used to treat patients in our area.” He believes so strongly in the need to donate that he and the rest of the commission have appropriated funds for a public awareness advertising campaign, urging their fellow citizens who’ve beaten the virus to help others live.

“In ’97 and ’09 we all depended on this age group, and they came through for us. Now they seem to be the largest carriers of the virus,” he says. “If I could talk to each of them, I’d say, ‘You helped us out before. Instead of making walls of sandbags, just put on your masks, stay out of crowded gatherings, and maybe donate some of that plasma full of antibodies to help save a life.’

“We’re all looking forward to the day our community will be able to celebrate overcoming a catastrophe once again. We need everybody – everybody – to fight this fight.”