PHOTOGRAPHED BY MORGANA WINGARD

HAMPTON, VIRGINIA - July 27, 2020: I was one of the first people in the State of Virginia and the young group that caught it. It's hard to pinpoint exactly where. Only thing I can do is guess where I most likely might have been exposed. I'm a photographer and I was doing a lot of shooting at the time. So, there’s the possibility that one of my clients had it and gave it to me at a photo shoot or I might have caught it at a concert.

I did what everyone thought we were supposed to do: I stayed in the house, didn’t come out unless I really had to. And then one day, I had a really bad fever and I couldn’t understand why this fever wouldn't go away.

That made me curious because normally I never get sick. I can go a whole year without even a headache. The first time I went to the hospital, they diagnosed me wrong. They said I had bronchitis. I went home. But, the fever didn't go away. Two days later, I went to a different hospital to get a different perspective. They gave me some Tylenol and sent me back home again. My temperature went down at first, but when I got back home, it went right back up to 103 within two hours. At this point I was pretty frustrated with the whole process because I had a fever plus going back and forth from the hospital and they just sent me home. So, I ended up becoming stubborn – determined not to go back to the hospital.

Then, I started vomiting everything I ate. I couldn't hold anything down. I was dehydrated and lightheaded. On March 13 I laid on the floor of the bathroom next to the toilet. That's when my wife saw me and said, “Either you’re going to the hospital or I'm calling the ambulance.”

So, I went to a third hospital. The doctor there told me, “Mr. Campbell, you have double pneumonia.” I was shocked because all week long, I just had a fever and now I have double pneumonia. The doctor gave me a choice. He said, “We can send you back home or we can try and put you on a ventilator and see if that helps.”

When he told me that I was confused to say the least. I was like, “How do I go from having a fever to almost dying?” That's a big step to just cross over. You know? “I was just fine a week ago. How did I get here?” Nobody knows what it feels like but I didn't feel like I was dying. I'm thinking, “This is what it feels like? Cause I feel like I could still make it at this point, you know?”

Those were my options: go home or go on a ventilator. They came in with a paper for me to sign that it was my choice. At that point I was really out of it because I was so exhausted — like I just ran a marathon exhausted. I signed the paper.

First thing I remember after that was this crazy dream. Let's just say a couple of people died in the process of my dream. It felt so real. You ever had a dream where you had to go to the bathroom and you woke up like, “Oh snap! I'm not in the bathroom!” It was that kind of dream.

If a patient is delirious or in a wrong state of mind the hospital staff will play along. I remember a doctor came in and said, “Lift you’re your right arm,” so she could take my blood pressure.  

I'm like, “I can't.”

And she says, “Why?”

I told her “I got shot. That's why I came.”

She was like, “Oh my goodness! You have? You got shot where?”

“Right here,” I said pointing to my right arm. “I can't lift it.”

And she goes, “Well, I don't see no bullet holes.”

And I was like, “I don't know. I think they took the bullet.”

She was like, “Oh, okay. I'm happy you’re doing better.”

Now you see, from my point of view, she understood me. That was confirmation that I'm not crazy — that that really happened. So, at this point everything in my dream was true. It was bad. It was a nightmare really. My brother had died. My brother-in-law had died. My mother-in-law had died. So, I woke up with all those emotions. You know what I'm saying? I'm thinking I just lost three people and my wife was pregnant in the hospital with me. 

It gets worse! 

I remember one of the nurses coming in and, in my mind, I thought it was her first day. She was doing something with the machine connected to the IV. I was confused because it took her longer than the other doctors. So, I'm like, “If you don't know what you're doing, please get help. I can’t afford for you to make a mistake because if you make a mistake that could be my life.”

She was just like, “Oh, it's going to be okay, Mr. Campbell. I've got plenty of experience. This might be my first day, but I got over 25 years of experience in Jamaica.” I don't know if she said that or not, but that’s what I remember. And then I remember her trying to rush me out of the hospital and almost getting fired because she lied trying to get me out of there.

And then it got worse! 

I ended up feeling like they were getting tired of me in the hospital and wanted to get me out of there because I was too much. So, I thought they were trying to kill me. When the AC kicked on in the room, I thought it was pepper spray. Every time the AC kicked on, in my mind, that was them trying to gas me to death, like I was in a gas chamber. I started yelling, "Why are y'all hurting me? Why are y'all doing this to me?” You know. I'm going off like that.

They like, “Yeah he's crazy.”

I remember one of the nurses came in the room and she’s looking at me, “Nobody’s trying to hurt you Mr. Campbell. You have been exposed to COVID-19.”

I said, “You’re lying!!”

I'm going through all these emotions and I'm in the ICU for what I think is four days. Finally, I talked to my wife on the phone and she's like, “Everything is fine. Your brothers are fine. Nothing happened to them. I just talked to your brother today. They're doing good.”

And I started crying on the phone. I haven't cried in years. I told her, “My brother’s not dead? But, I saw him. I saw the guy shoot him right in front of me.”

She was like, “No, your brother is fine. There's nothing wrong with him. Everything's okay.” And then she hit me with, “You've been asleep for 12 days.” Then a light bulb went off. Twelve days I was asleep. The only information I had was I got shot. And the nurse said, “I'm glad you're better now.” That's what I took and ran with. So, I thought everything was true.

Now, I'm starting to get my mind back. I'm asking myself, “If all that was a dream, then what is really going on?” Then the doctor came in and talked to me once they realized I wasn't crazy. They gave me real important details about what happened. They told me that my body went through a lot of stress. I had double pneumonia, but because of COVID-19 and my fever combined, it ended up attacking my kidneys and my liver and I had two blood clots in my lungs all at the same time while I was on the ventilator. To top it off, my body wasn't taking in the food that they were trying to feed me through the tube, so I was vomiting while I was on a ventilator.

Because of that, in those 12 days, I lost 50 pounds — all in the wrong places might I add! I lost weight in my shoulders and my elbows. All the weird places. 

After that happened, we tried to get me back to normal. I started therapy. At this point, I had been in the hospital for maybe 21 days.  I’m 26 years old and I couldn’t even go to the bathroom by myself. I couldn’t turn in my bed. I couldn’t get off the bed. The doctor has to come in and give me a pan and say, “Handle your business.” Then they clean you up and wipe you up.

I remember that being enough motivation for me to want to walk. When my physical therapist first came through, all they wanted me to do was stand on my own two feet. I remember the first time I stood up, with their assistance, I was out of breath. But, the doctors and everybody in the hospital were excited. They were happy and cheerful because I had pulled through and everything else was part of the process. They were head over heels because I survived the hard part as far as coronavirus goes.

But the recovery phase is the part that people kind of forget about.

I'm still recovering. I got a doctor for every part of my body right now. The main problem is the nerve damage in my right arm. Today, all I can do is lift it a few inches. Now, that's more than what I could do in the hospital. I could barely lift it at all then. It's been almost six months. My neurologist says I have two damaged nerves on my right arm. As far as treatment goes, it's one of those things that can only be healed with time and physical therapy. He said there's surgery that I can get done but because of the rate of my recovery so far, he doesn't recommend it.

The nerve damage has changed my life completely. I'm a photographer.  I need both arms with my camera gear. At this point, I can’t get my arm up to my shutter button and I can’t get the angles I need so it put up a big little stab into what I was doing.

I spent a total of 40 plus days in the hospital with no visitation. At the time the hospital was locked down — nobody came through. After being home for about two weeks, I guess you could  say depression kicked in a little bit. I've always been self-getting. At that point, I'm asking my wife to help me with everything. She's wonderful. She's doing everything she possibly can, but it's not what she was doing. It was what I couldn't do. That's the hard pill to swallow because you don't ever want to say you can't do something. That's a bad feeling. 

It was very depressing, but my brother-in-law talked to me. He pretty much said, “You might not be able to pick up a camera right now, but you can do something else. In the meantime, you can work on your craft in another way. Photography is your passion and all of that, but what else can you get up?”

I took a lot of advice from him and that's where I ended up starting this show where I interview people and talk about their stories and how they got to where they're at. That's where my passion is going to distract my mind from what I'm not able to do. One thing about your mind, you can't think about two things at one time. By focusing all my energy on something else, it’s helping me focus on what I can do.

I'm going in the right direction, but it's taking a little while. The recovery process is very long.

I wish I could have bounced back. But in reality, I feel better with it being this because it’s giving me time to think about my future and work on certain goals, you know? And then at the same time, my story is able to help a lot of people.

I'm in a coronavirus survivors’ group on Facebook. Basically, it's a group where everyone had it or is going through it. I find a lot of people that caught the virus and don't know what it's about. They are scared so I encourage them, “Hey man, you talking to  somebody that had double pneumonia, two blood clots in my lungs, it attacked my kidneys and liver, but I made it. I'm still here talking to you. It's okay.” I wouldn't be able to say that if I didn't go through so much.