Man shares painful diary of covid-19 from his ICU 5:47
(CNN) -
Amid difficult breaths with supplemental oxygen, Travis Campbell struggles to convey a message about his battle with COVID-19 at a Virginia hospital.
He really regrets not having been vaccinated.
And although he hopes that the worst moment is through, he believed that certain things needed to be arranged in case he died.
Campbell, the father of several children, has been in a Bristol hospital since the end of July, and has made a kind of video diary from his room, documenting an astonishing roller coaster of decline and improvement.
"I was wrong big time guys," he said through an oxygen mask in a video posted to Facebook on Wednesday.
"I did not get vaccinated (...) I made a mistake, I admit it," he added.
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During her first videos in July, she described her illness in complete, uninterrupted sentences.
By July 31, he was only saying a few words between forced breaths.
By Tuesday he was lying in hairspray, struggling to talk about whether he and his wife would let hospital staff put him on a ventilator if necessary.
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That night seemed to be the darkest yet, because by Wednesday, he was recalling a difficult thought that came to mind: He may not live to see his 19-year-old daughter's wedding, whenever it happens.
Tuesday night "I had to make a phone call to my 14-year-old son (...) and I had to ask his permission so that if I did not return home, he would accompany my daughter to the altar" on the day of his wedding, Campbell said in Wednesday's video.
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In two interviews given to CNN from their hospital bed this week, Campbell and his wife, Kellie, detailed how the coronavirus affected their family this summer and why they had chosen not to get vaccinated in the first place.
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Virginia, like the rest of the United States, has seen an increase in COVID-19 cases as the highly contagious delta variant became dominant in the country.
Kellie Campbell and her children contracted the virus, and all but one had symptoms such as a cough, fever and dizziness.
"We are all on the mend," Kellie told CNN's Don Lemon on Thursday night.
"We didn't have symptoms as severe as Travis."
Lemon asked Travis Campbell why the family was not vaccinated.
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"In early 2020, everyone on our daughter's basketball team got sick. They had the same covid symptoms," Campbell responded.
"So when the covid appeared, everyone automatically assumed that we had already had" the disease, he explained.
When the cases declined this spring, "we thought we had beaten the odds," he said.
Travis did not clarify if they had confirmed they had contracted the disease in 2020. In any case, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, for its acronym in English) recommend that people get vaccinated regardless of whether they already had the disease. .
And on Friday, the CDC released a study suggesting that people who had had COVID-19 in 2020 and had not been vaccinated were more than twice as likely to be re-infected in May or June 2021 compared to people who had they had infected but were fully vaccinated.
Also influencing their decision was the fact that the Campbells live in rural Virginia, so they didn't feel they were interacting with enough people to put them at risk enough to make the decision to get vaccinated.
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Now he regrets his decision and urges others to get vaccinated.
"I can't breathe. I'm drowning. I feel like a fish out of water," Campbell told Lemon Thursday.
"It was my fault," he said.
"I should have taken my kids and my wife and got vaccinated anyway. But I'm paying the price," he reflected.
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"And I say to each and every person: if you are undecided, I want you to evaluate very precisely what your life means to you. And go and get vaccinated, please, please," he added.
His daughter says she is proud of the father for his message
Generally speaking, Travis Campbell was being able to say up to five words between breaths on Thursday night.
When he spoke to CNN the next morning, at times he was able to express himself more.
"I feel like I have another chance, and I hope I do," he told CNN's "New Day" on Friday.
As for the daughter whose wedding she was worried about missing out on, she said hearing him talk about it was heartbreaking.
"You never want to hear your dad talk about (the possibility of) not being there for those great moments in your life," Madison Campbell told CNN in an interview live from her home.
"I just want to let him know how proud I am of him," she said.
"I think being on Facebook, making those videos, is making a difference; it is saving lives," he said.
"I couldn't love him more."
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Travis Campbell, who was listening to her from his hospital bed, reacted with tears in his eyes and said he was grateful for his children.
"Vaccines are very important, and I can improve as a parent, as a human being, and I hope to God that everyone else can," he said.
CNN's Michael Nedelman and Lauren Mascarenhas contributed to this report.