CNN’s Brooke Baldwin Recounts Battle With Coronavirus: An ‘Eerie Melancholy’ Crept in
CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin, who has been at home recovering from coronavirus, made a brief appearance on the network Monday to talk about her recovery, saying the virus caused an “eerie melancholy” to creep in at night.
“I knew I would get to this point, but man, I feel like I went to hell and back,” Baldwin told Brianna Keilar, who has been hosting Baldwin’s show in her absence. “And I was one of the lucky ones.”
Baldwin said her husband had been “totally exposed,” explaining, “We tried for the first two days. The doctor was like, ‘Use separate bedrooms, use separate bathrooms.’ That lasted for a whopping two days. And then, around day three is when the virus really took hold of me. Just debilitating body aches, fever, chills. And then, at night, this eerie melancholy would kind of creep in. … I’m a glass-half-full, chemically-blessed kind of gal, so it was odd for me. By day three, he was like, ‘Forget this physical distancing.’ He would hold me and whisper, ‘You’re going to be OK.’”
Baldwin said her body gave her “the middle finger,” adding that it wasn’t like her experience with the flu. “You go into the flu, it’s awful, but you know it’s kind of a finite, five-day, knockdown, drag-out fight with your body. You know it’s a virus, you know you can’t take anything for it, and you just sit in bed. With coronavirus, it’s like, ‘I’m kind of OK in the beginning,’ and then, ‘Oh, no you’re not.’ … My body gave me the middle finger. Thank goodness my lungs did not. I was one of the lucky ones.”
Baldwin announced on April 3 that she had tested positive for coronavirus, becoming the second CNN anchor to contract the virus after host Chris Cuomo. He described his experience in similar terms, saying in a separate interview, “You have these wicked phantasmagorical experiences that are not dreams.” He also said the illness also caused him to reflect on his life, saying he didn’t think that what he did “professionally” was “worth my time,” but later walked back the comments.
Baldwin said she experienced a similar period of reflection.
“I started thinking a lot about joy,” she said. “Why don’t I go to the beach more? I’m suddenly obsessed with Charleston, South Carolina in a way I never have been. I just want to be at the beach. I want to see the sea. I thought a lot about my marriage. … Having my husband take such amazing care of me, I said, you don’t have to be this self-reliant, super-independent woman. Let him take care of you.”
You can watch above, via CNN.
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