CNN Anchor Brooke Baldwin Recounts The Dread, Isolation And Relentless Body Aches Of COVID-19
“Relentless, scary, and lonely,” is how CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin describes the “two-week beating” of COVID-19. In a heartfelt essay posted on CNN.com, Baldwin writes about the physical, mental and emotional toll the coronavirus takes on sufferers.
Baldwin writes that “under the influence of coronavirus, as each day came to a close, I would often cry, unable to stave off the sense of dread and isolation I felt about what was to come. I was fighting constant body aches. In the evenings, I started a habit of climbing into the bathtub for 45 to 60 minutes just to try to use the hot water to distract my skin from the all-encompassing ache that would begin in my lower extremities — the kind of ache that only two extra-strength Tylenol could eventually dull.
“Looking back, my sense of time feels warped and inexact. Some days crawled by tortuously slowly, while others disappeared unaccounted for in my memory, lost in the wash of emotion, sleep, and illness.”
Baldwin revealed on April 3 that she’d tested positive for the coronavirus, writing on Instagram that the chills, fever and aches had come on quickly but that she was otherwise healthy, with no underlying conditions.
In an update posted on her Instagram page yesterday, Baldwin wrote that she hopes to be back on television April 27.
The CNN anchor recalls the earliest symptom: “I can remember the day before I lost my ability to taste or smell. I kept smelling the acrid ammonia-like odor of jewelry cleaner. Except there wasn’t any jewelry cleaner in sight.
“By the next morning — wham — I couldn’t taste the salted butter on my toast, and couldn’t catch a whiff of the peppermint in my tea. Along with my appetite, my energy was also zapped. I slept easily 10-12 hours at night, waking many mornings soaking wet having sweat through the sheets. A golf-ball sized gland swelling under my jaw became the daily sign that my body was fighting.”
Baldwin writes that over the course of two weeks the “fever, chills, and aches” would occasionally subside “just long enough to fool me into thinking I was finally recovering. Then they would revisit me with a vengeance.”