MOLINE, Ill. — A Moline man is alive today after battling Covid-19 from a ventilator for weeks. His family says his trumpet saved his life.
Music has always filled the soul and the lungs of Dave Navarro. Dave says he got his love of music from his father. At the age of 8, Dave's dad, Martin, put a trumpet in his hands. Sixty years later, it's practically never left. Dave plays in two bands in the Quad Cities. He's also played at countless weddings and funerals.
But things changed after a gig with one of his bands back in July.
"The next Monday after that, we practiced, and our guitar player said he didn't feel good at all. His vision was all messed up. He wanted to stop at the hospital, and he found out he had a mini stroke due to the virus. He tested positive," explains Dave.
It was a case of the Coronavirus. And it spread to Dave, seven of his band members, and seven of his family members.
"My wife had it and my daughter had it too. And my daughter's whole family had it," says Dave.
Everyone had different symptoms with different severities. But Dave and his daughter Melissa had to go to the hospital.
"She was there a week and got to come home. Me, I got the ventilator. I was in an induced coma with a ventilator down my throat flat on my back, and I did not move my legs and arms for almost a month," says Dave.
Dave had to be in the hospital alone, without family.
"We all know the stories you hear when your family members on a ventilator, they're not coming off," says Melissa Murphey, Dave's daughter.
Family couldn't visit. All they could do was call the doctor for updates morning, noon and night.
"The one thing they kept reassuring us when he was on the ventilator is that he's moving air very well. When he plays the trumpet, he uses parts of his lungs that we don't use," says Melissa.
Then after almost three weeks, Dave woke up. He was off the ventilator.
"It was so bad. I didn’t know what was right-side up, if I was upside down. I was just laying there, and I had no idea where I was, what I was doing, no sense of direction. There was no communication with anybody. No family members could be there with me. My legs were like noodles I couldn’t walk my arms were very weak. I laid there a couple days, and everyone was saying you have to get strong, you have to get strong. But I had no concept of what I had to do," remembers Dave.
Dave's motivation came three days later.
"I was in rehab, and I found out my dad passed away," says Dave.
War hero, Martin Navarro was 98 years old.
"He landed at Omaha Beach in Normandy, France on D-Day. Six months later he was in the Battle of the Bulge," says Dave.
Still in the hospital, Dave knew what he had to do.
"And I told them I have to go to my dad's funeral and play Taps," says Dave.
"The first thing he told me was I need my trumpet," remembers Melissa.
A rehab recovery that should have taken four weeks tool Dave seven days. He was released one day before his father's funeral, a parade of more than one hundred people wishing him well as he was wheeled out.
The following day from a wheel chair, horn in hand, Dave's still healing lungs honored his hero.
"The first note came out so strong and clear, and I thought you know what? I'm going to make it through this," says Dave.
Each note, a tribute. Each note, a reminder of the strength from within stronger than the virus.
"His trumpet saved his life," says Melissa.
Dave is still doing physical therapy at home. He says once the pandemic is over, his goal is to get back to playing his trumpet with his band.