My COVID Experience
A Personal Tale of Recovery and Resilience
Emily Regan is an Olympic gold medalist in rowing and a Classroom Champions Athlete Mentor. Emily is featured in the SEL Foundations Curriculum unit on Teamwork.
I’ve seen so many people talking about how the age of people infected with COVID-19 has trended downward and that means we’re fine. So I thought it was a good time to share my experience with the virus so that people connected to me could read a first-hand account of the impact of a mild/moderate case of COVID-19 on a young, healthy, fit individual.
I am an elite athlete, a 4-time world champion in rowing, and I won a gold medal at the 2016 Olympic games. I’m currently training for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, now in 2021.
Back in March, everything was changing so rapidly. The virus started spreading in the Northeast U.S. where our team was training for the Olympics. It was an incredibly stressful time, and we were entering our last two-month stretch of selection. Everything started getting canceled, my dad found out he was going to need surgery and radiation to remove cancer from his face, and officials were insisting that the Olympics would definitely go on as planned. We were told that the Olympics don’t get canceled (turns out they can be postponed though).
Our team continued to train following the local guidelines as they rapidly changed throughout March. I was definitely concerned about the virus and what we were hearing was happening in Italy and other countries, however I considered myself and my teammates low-risk individuals. I couldn’t tell you the last time I was at a bar or another crowded place. Everything I do, especially during an Olympic year is all about recovery and being in the best position I possibly can be in to make the team. So my social circle is really small, almost completely limited to my team and USRowing employees.
New Jersey issued a stay-at-home order on March 21st. Our entire team took ergs (indoor rowing machines) and weight lifting equipment home with us and I started training on my porch. Two days later, our team received an email that a person most of us had been in close contact with, tested positive for COVID-19. We were instructed to quarantine for two weeks following our last interaction with the individual. I had worked with this person, who at the time was not showing any symptoms, just three days earlier. I started my quarantine and was so thankful that I had done a massive grocery haul a day earlier.
One by one my teammates, ages 23–37, started showing symptoms of the virus.
I didn’t think I was having any symptoms, but I did notice that I was having a hard time breathing when the intensity of my workouts started increasing and that I was starting to sleep close to 12 hours a night. However, I didn’t have a fever. So, at the time I attributed the difficulty breathing to erging outside in the cold and the extra sleep to the fact that the Olympics had just been postponed and my entire focus for the last four years was no longer close to 100 days away.
As most of my teammates started to recover from their acute COVID-19 symptoms, I started noticing a fever on April 1st. That was Day 12 of my quarantine. Our team doctor told us to look out for anything over 99.0 because their practice had seen people testing positive with fevers as low as 99.0. On the night of Day 12 I had a baby fever of 99.2, so I texted my doctor to let him know.
I genuinely thought it was unlikely that I had COVID-19 because typically people were showing symptoms days 4–5 after exposure. So I thought that the elevated temperature was probably just a fluke. The next morning I woke up, I felt great, and I didn’t had a fever that entire day. Friday, April 3rd, was a completely different story.
Friday, April 3rd, was a completely different story.
I slept over 12 hours that night, and when I woke up it was painful to breathe, and my entire body ached like I had done something really wrong while I was practicing the day before. That day my fever ranged from about 100.4–101.7. I couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs without needing to sit down and take a nap. I could barely even get out of a chair without exhausting myself. Not only did I sleep for 12 hours that night, but I also took a three-hour nap. I was too weak to make myself food that entire day, until I forced myself to make pancakes that night because I knew I had to eat something.
The next night I slept for 12 hours again. It was still painful to breathe and I was still extremely exhausted and unable to do simple household tasks. Thankfully, though, my body aches were gone that day.
These were the two days where I had the worst symptoms, but just because these symptoms improved after two days didn’t mean I was fully recovered from COVID. It took the rest of April for me to be able to train normally again.
I took four days off from training while I was sick, and in hindsight I wish I had given myself the freedom to take more days off.
When I first started trying to work out again, I tried doing a 30-minute jog. My heart rate was really high and I felt like I was running through water. The jog was meant to be light and a small attempt to get my body moving again, but it was so difficult I had to stop after 20 minutes. I am used to doing workouts that range from 80–120 minutes. I don’t give up easily, and I was just near my peak closing in on final selection for the Olympics. Now I couldn’t even jog/walk for 30 minutes.
The next day I tried an easy erg. The best way I can describe what I was feeling is when you crash and burn on a workout because you didn’t fuel your body properly. My legs felt fine, but I felt physically faint and shaky — not ready to do the workout. I completed the workout by taking one stroke at a time and allowing myself to be as slow as I needed to be.
The entire month of April proved to be a big struggle for me to work out. Things improved to where I was able to work out consistently, but I had to go 10–15 splits slower that I normally would on easy workouts to control my heart rate and make it through the workouts. And for reference, 10–15 splits is a ton, which basically meant that I was erging at a pace of an average high school female rower. I still didn’t feel like myself, and I always felt like I was carrying 50 extra pounds when I was working out.
Things didn’t really improve until I went for a run the morning of May 2nd, a month later. All of a sudden I felt light and like I was in my own body again. It felt like a complete 180-degree turn. While I felt normal in my body again, it has been a long journey to get back into shape. As of today, over three months after my symptoms went away, I am working on getting back into the shape I was in in February and March before all of the setbacks. While it only took me a month to feel like I was in my own body again, I have teammates who were dealing with complications from COVID-19 for over two months.
So if you don’t think the virus is that big of a deal because you are young, healthy, or fit, please consider my story. My guess is that my teammates and I are at a minimum healthier and fitter than most of you, and it knocked many of us down hard. I have personally never experienced any other illness like this. I have never been knocked off of my feet for an entire month before. Please wear a mask to protect yourself and the people around you. I am hoping to donate blood plasma to help a person in need.
Please wear a mask to protect yourself and the people around you. I am hoping to donate blood plasma to help a person in need.
We’re all in this together, and the more we can do small things, the sooner our lives can get back to something resembling normal again.
