Loss, love and survival: Robbinsdale family copes with the coronavirus

The gallery of photographs taken at North Memorial Hospital shows medical staffers lining a hallway, giving David Gustafson a standing ovation.

Near death several times, the 53-year-old firefighter and property inspector is now a COVID-19 survivor.

"I shouldn’t be here, from what everyone says," David declared. "I feel extremely blessed to be here."

In the hospital, he had lost 45 pounds.

The tubes from his oxygen tank dangle under his chair.

"He was short of breath, and he didn’t feel good," David’s wife, Jennifer, said, recalling how both of them were infected with the virus in early April, just days apart.

The couple ended up on the same floor of the ICU at North Memorial Hospital.

"My symptoms were I felt I was extremely fatigued and shortness of breath," Jennifer says. "I was coming down the stairs and I got halfway down, and it was like somebody put a plastic bag over my head. I couldn’t inhale or exhale."

Jennifer, 62, a health unit coordinator at the hospital, was released five days later.

But David remained under treatment for 50 days, half that time on a ventilator.

"He spent days and days in the prone position, paralyzed, very heavily sedated, on very aggressive ventilator settings," said Dr. Deanna Diebold, a pulmonary and critical care physician at North Memorial. "He was very sick with a couple of very big life-threatening complications."

Diebold said David’s oxygen levels were dangerously low and he was bleeding internally.

"Was he at the point where he could have expired from this?" she was asked. "Oh, very much so, on a couple of different occasions," Diebold said.

But it got worse.

In early May, while David was still in the hospital, Jennifer’s 89-year old mother, Carol Wilson, died overnight.

She’d been diagnosed with the virus and was living at a New Hope senior center.

The Gustafsons said they don’t know how Wilson was infected.

"The mystery of how she caught it," Jennifer explained. "She didn’t leave the apartment complex, and the only time she left the apartment was to go get mail."

Finally, on May 29, David was released from the hospital.

It was a moment of victory and relief for his family and the health care workers who treated him.

A group of retired firefighters gave him a long-awaited motorcycle escort home.

"It’s very much of a celebration, right?" Diebold said, smiling. "I mean, we’re mostly happy for him and for his family. We and the nurses worked super hard to help him get there. So, we’re all excited for ourselves as well."

"Absolutely, I’ve got the best wife in the world. Best family, friends," David added. "Two different fire departments looking after me. There’s a lot of friends out there, and a lot of support."

But the 53-year-old’s health struggles aren’t over.

Now, David has to resume treatments for cancer of his kidney.

Those procedures, interrupted by the coronavirus.

"It’s just a matter of I want to get back to normal, and that’s the frustrating part," he said. "Some days, it’s like, ‘When is this going to end?’"

The Gustafsons, who’ve suffered through so much, say what happened to their family should be a warning to those who think the threat from COVID-19 is over.

"What would you say to these folks?" Jennifer was asked. "Be very cautious … to me it’s like you’ve got to assume everybody’s positive, I guess, until proven otherwise," she said quietly. "I don’t know if people are in denial, because it’s still alive out there. Not in the news like it used to be, but it’s still active out there."