HOW COVID-19 CHANGED MINNESOTANS

A kickboxing nurse, a dancer who hopes to walk again, and a defiant bar owner reflect how the pandemic changed lives in Minnesota.

Urgent change

Many nurses quit after losing patients or getting sick themselves. Galante persevered after 20 years as a hospital nurse, but she needed to make changes at work. As a float nurse, she used to take any open shifts, but she couldn’t go back after the pandemic to the intensive care unit where she confronted so much death.

Kickboxing started as a coping mechanism, but ended up as far more. She developed close relationships and gained confidence at her gym, Clarke’s MMA and Boxing. Her two teenage children encouraged her.

After two official matches, she entered a cage match in Des Moines, Iowa, last December. Galante took hard punches to the face and a kick to the stomach. She absorbed the blows and started dodging and shifting and backing up her opponent.

“I love knees,” she said. “I know it’s weird, but I would like put her to the cage and I just hit her with my knees.”

Galante won the fight, and befriended her opponent. They plan to train together.

Constance Scheurer, 69, is still waiting for her second act after the pandemic. The former ballerina and Vegas showgirl hasn’t walked since she was hospitalized in summer 2020 with severe COVID.

“I was on the biggest stages in the world, and even in Europe at age 15,” the Minneapolis resident said. “And now my feet are useless.”

The nerves carrying signals from her brain to her limbs became inflamed, resulting in leg pain and weakness. Doctors suspect COVID either caused the nerve damage or aggravated a prior condition.

As many as 700,000 Minnesota adults endured so-called long COVID after their initial illnesses, according to a federal survey last fall. Most recovered. Scheurer is among the estimated 50,000 with severe, lingering impairments. An overreaction by the immune system seems to trigger long COVID, but why it hits some people and not others is unclear.

Scheurer still attends concerts at Orchestra Hall. She carries the memories of her family’s musical legacy. Her German-born grandfather was an assistant concertmaster who helped build the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra by recruiting musicians from Europe. Her father was a lead bass player in the orchestra.

She taught dance at a studio in Woodbury after ending a professional career in 1983 that spanned Boston Ballet, MTV in Hollywood and the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Now, watching ballet is frustrating. She hopes surgery or exercises can help her regain mobility.

“If I walk with a walker,” she said, “I will be very pleased.”

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