Hall of Fame receiver Michael Irvin revealed during the Rich Eisen Show on Friday that he contracted COVID-19 in late June.
He calls it the worst thing he’s ever dealt with.
“I didn’t know I had it, then I am really sickSaid Irvin. “I mean, a throbbing headache for four or five days. You couldn’t eat. You can’t sleep. You just have to endure the pain. I did two tests. They all came back negative. So I’m like, ‘OK, I’m fine. I do not have it. I do not have it. But I feel the pain, and then after going through about three weeks of hell – about three weeks of hell – I said, ‘OK, I’m going to go do the antibody test’, because it had to be Something. It had to be COVID. There’s no way I’ve been through that kind of pain, that kind of hell, and no one knows what it is. Then I’m afraid it will come back. So I did the antibody test and of course the antibody test, which I think is more accurate, came back that I had the antibodies. My doctor said I should be good enough by now.
Irvin’s career ended with an injury to the cervical spinal cord that left him temporarily paralyzed. He also injured his collarbone and tore an ACL during his 12-year career.
Irvin has played 159 of the possible 192 career games for the Cowboys.
Still, he ranks the COVID-19 headache above them all in terms of pain tolerance.
“I pray for everyone who has it,” Irvin said. The headache, I said to myself, I’m not lying, I wanted to get out of here. I was like, ‘Dude, I can’t even take this.’ The only thing I kept saying was, ‘You only have two weeks. Two weeks. Two weeks.’ I pray for all the people who have these migraines, because it’s bad like a migraine, and they have it all the time. It would be the most difficult thing in the world to experience because I just went through it. It was the most difficult thing in the world I have ever dealt with.
