CNN Newsroom anchor Brooke Baldwin announced on April 3 that she had contracted the coronavirus, and has been off the air ever since.
The subsequent 17 days at home have been rough.
Baldwin decided to write a personal essay about her experience for CNN.com.
“Evenings would bring on an eerie melancholy—Which was particularly odd for me—a glass-half-full/chemically blessed kind of gal,” she wrote.
Baldwin wrote about how the illness often brought her to tears. She felt awful, physically and emotionally.
“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 and her husband began sleeping in separate rooms once her quarantine began. She wrote that he would bring her soup, toast and tea, but the food didn’t matter much to her because she couldn’t taste or smell anything anyway.
Baldwin called her husband’s attempts to aid her “restorative beyond measure,” and said that thankfully he still has not developed any Covid-19 symptoms.
“Get him one of those antibody tests because so far, knock on wood, the man has yet to get sick. Antibody tests are designed to identify individuals who have already contracted the coronavirus, including asymptomatic carriers, in an effort to understand the actual scope of the outbreak and determine possible immunity.”
While the experience has been a terrible one, Baldwin is taking a positive from it: The power of human connection.
“And I realized that sharing my own vulnerability with others online and receiving positive energy and well-wishes back brings me the gift of connection. I quickly discovered how grateful I was to all of these people showing me love. It didn’t take long for me to learn to lean in and receive it. In my darker moments, I would log on to Instagram just to be lifted up by love.“It was overwhelming in a way I have never felt in my life. And it showed me how—even when the world stops and takes a collective breath—we’re all capable of showing up for one another. And for that, I will forever be grateful.
“I wouldn’t wish this virus upon anyone, but I hope as my smell and taste and some sense of normalcy start to return, that I will also hold onto the clarity and connection I found while I was so damn sick.”