Pink says battling COVID-19 alongside her 3-year-old son was 'the scariest thing I've ever, ever been through in my whole life'
Pink is detailing her family’s experience with COVID-19.
The singer, 40, recently revealed that she and her 3-year-old son, Jameson, tested positive and have since recovered from the coronavirus disease. Now, in a new interview with Ellen DeGeneres, she talks about the “terrifying” experience and reveals that she thought she was going to die.
“We’re doing OK this week,” the star said at the top of the interview. “I don’t even know what day it is, but this is a better week than the previous ones have been for our little household. Jameson is two days now without a fever, which is really a huge relief.”
Pink said the ordeal started when her son developed a fever nearly a month ago on March 14. It was three days after they started to quarantine.
“It would come and go,” she said of her son’s fever. Additionally, he had “stomach pains and then diarrhea and then chest pains” and a sore throat. “It was sort of all over the place. Every day it was some new symptom.” However, the fever stayed and went “up and up and up,” reaching at 103 degrees at one point. “It was terrifying.”
Around March 16, Pink became sick too. Her symptoms started with fatigue, then she developed chills, then nausea. She also had a sore throat — first on one side of her throat, then the other, then both. But she “never had a fever. I never had what they tell you to look for.”
While the singer is superfit, she is a lifelong asthmatic, requiring hospitalization for the condition as a child, but not in the last 30 years. She said that two to four days after she started having symptoms, she “woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t breathe... I have this rescue inhaler that I use and I couldn’t function without it.”
Her breathing problems were so severe she thought she may die, she admitted. “I’m like: Oh, my god. Wow. All the crazy stuff I did [during my life and] this is it? This is the way it ends?” she recalled thinking.
At that point, she was able to get one coronavirus test for both her and her son. She took it and a week later it came back positive, which she said “I already knew” based on their level of sickness.
They considered going to the hospital at the peak of their illness — when Jameson was throwing up, had chest pains and it hurt for him to breathe. She said she thought, “What are we doing right now because this is the scariest thing I’ve ever, ever been through in my whole life.” She said she also found herself “crying, praying— and I realize how ridiculous I sounded - I thought they told us our kids were going to be OK?”
They ultimately decided to “ride it out” and “slowly, slowly, slowly” they “started to get better.”
She also spoke about it being “really controversial to people that I was able to get my hands on a test.” To that, she had two replies: One is that people “should be angry that I can get a test and you can’t. But being angry at me is not going to help anything. It’s not going to solve the issue of the fact that you can’t get your hands on a test. You should be angry about that. And we should work together to try and change that.” And number two is “tell me anybody with a sick a 3-year-old that if they could get their hands on a test, wouldn’t take it. if they say that, I’m calling bullsh**.”
She continued, “Yes, the health care system is jacked, government is in a way failing us by not being prepared, but this is where we’re at,” she said. “Shouldn’t we figure out way to a get together and make it better for each other instead of fight each other?”
Pink, who has no idea how she contracted COVID-19, said her husband, Carey Hart, and their 8-year-old daughter, Willow, have had no symptoms whatsoever.
The performer, who shaved her head in quarantine, first revealed her diagnosis over the weekend — and at the same time said she was donating $1 million to support coronavirus relief efforts. Half was given to to the Temple University Hospital Emergency Fund in Philadelphia in honor of her mother, Judy Moore, who worked there for 18 years. The other $500,000 was given to the City of Los Angeles Mayor’s Emergency COVID-19 Crisis Fund.
For the latest coronavirus news and updates, follow along at https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus. According to experts, people over 60 and those who are immunocompromised continue to be the most at risk. If you have questions, please reference the CDC and WHO’s resource guides.
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