Emmanuel Sanders fears that his case of COVID-19 could turn at any moment

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Like plenty of players, Saints receiver Emmanuel Sanders has tested positive for COVID-19. Unlike many players, Sanders has developed symptoms of the disease.

He also has a nagging concern that his situation could deteriorate at any time.

“Every night I go to sleep I’m like, ‘Lord, please, let me like wake up in the morning feeling good,'” Sanders said on the latest episode of Uninterrrupted’s 17 Weeks podcast on SiriusXM/Pandora. “Like, I don’t want to wake up in the middle of the night and like, can’t breathe. And like, shit just goes south, right? That’s like my biggest fear in watching that shit, it intensifies my fears, right? Because people can say whatever you want and everybody could say, ‘Oh yeah, I’m not scared to get COVID.’ But in the back of your head, and you may think you’re healthy but in the back of your head, you don’t know this virus. Nobody knows anything about this virus. You don’t know how your body’s gonna react and you don’t know at any moment, like if shit will go south, right?”

Sanders tested positive last Thursday after developing symptoms while at work.

“Showed up to practice,” Sanders said. “I wasn’t feeling well. It was just weird. And my wife, you know, she told me like the day before she was like, I can’t taste or smell anything. So that kind of like threw me off a little bit. So then the next day I show up to work and I’m running routes, but I’m just like, I just don’t feel good. So I ended up telling the trainers. I told the trainers I wasn’t feeling well. And then they start asking me questions. And then I told them about my wife. And after that they took me to get tested and I got tested and that test came back positive. And then they sent me to another doctor and that came back positive and I was just like, what the hell?

“Because truthfully, you know, I don’t really go anywhere. And the only places I’ve been was to take my son to go train for basketball and for football. And so I don’t know, that’s the only place that I possibly could have contracted it unless you know, me and my wife, we went and had dinner one night as well. So it’s a situation that sucks. I’m missing two games. But, you know, it is what it is. ootball is a game. And sometimes I think about it way too much over situations that could be, you know, deadly. And so I was upset about the two games at first, but then once I realized, damn, like I got COVID-19 and it’s way bigger than football. I just thank God that obviously I’m still in good health right now and that my wife’s still in good health.”

Sanders explained the symptoms he was experiencing.

“I just felt like I was like loopy,” Sanders said. “Like I was sitting in meetings and my mouth just kept watering and I was like, what the hell? Why is my mouth watering? And it was like that feeling that you’re going to throw up, but I didn’t feel like I was going to throw up, but my mouth was watering like something was coming. It was like weird. And so I told my coach, I was like, ‘Dude, my mouth keeps watering like I’m getting ready to throw up or something.’ I’m like, yo, it feels weird. And then it was like I just felt like loopy. I just didn’t feel like myself. I was like, I feel like I’m getting ready to catch the flu or something. It was weird. So I told my coach that and he was pretty much the one who was like, you should go tell the trainers. And so then I went and told the trainers, but I just didn’t feel like myself. Even when I was running, how I was running, like my body, it just didn’t feel right. I was running, but I was exhausting so much energy into running that it felt like abnormal. I didn’t feel like myself.”

Sanders said that, at first, his temperature was normal. On Friday, however, he developed a fever.

“I think I hit 102,” Sanders said. “And that was in the morning. So even if I would have showed up to work on that Friday, and we got to get tested every morning, they would have saw something because my fever would have been up there at 102. They would have noticed. So it was like actually perfect for me to get out of the building, because my symptoms really like hit that following Friday. But I felt it coming on that Thursday. Just body aches. Like literally I was laying in bed just shivering. 102 fever. My wife, she can’t smell or taste anything. And she has body [aches] but my wife, she doesn’t have a fever. Her body temperature stays at like 97, 98. But mine, like at night time, like last night, I think I hit like 100. And then the night before that I had 101 and then the first night I hit 102. But every night, like it comes back, my fever comes back. At night time around eight o’clock we both get like these weird like loopy feelings. Like, it feels like we’re glitchy. Like when I’m walking it feels like if my wife was to talk to me, it feels like I’m skipping a beat every now and then. It’s like the weirdest shit ever, and that comes like around like seven or eight.”

Sanders will miss two games at a minimum. Hopefully for him, the symptoms will resolve quickly. Hopefully for the Saints, he’ll be available for next Sunday night’s showdown with the Buccaneers.