Ex-Exodus vocalist Rob Dukes is unfortunately one of the 550,000+ United States citizens that has contracted COVID-19. Dukes tells the Talking Metal podcast that it was the sickest he's ever been in his life, later adding "it was completely debilitating." Dukes said pretty much everything in his daily life was a horrible struggle.
"I pretty much ended up in the hospital, but only for 12 hours. And then I got quarantined for two weeks at home and was on steroids and a bunch of different other drugs to try to keep me from getting pneumonia. So that's what I did. I stayed home for a couple of weeks. I had really bad bronchitis. I was coughing so much that it hurt my chest and my throat was all tore up — I was coughing blood. I couldn't sleep — achy, feverish for the first week. And then I just kept drinking a ton of fucking water — that's kind of what I did; I was drinking a ton of water. And it was really hard to eat. But then, as soon as I got better, I fucking went on a fucking tear. I probably put on 10 pounds since then."
"At one point, I was in the shower, and I had to go lay down. I was, like, 'All right. I'm done.' I took a cold shower to try to cool my body off, and then I just went and lay in bed. And then another time, I was laying on a couch… I had my wireless headset thing in the car. And I was, like, 'Oh, let me go grab that.' And I just walked to my car, which is probably 50 feet. And by the time I got to my car and got back, I had to go lay down for an hour, 'cause I was just so exhausted. It was brutal, man.
"What this COVID-19 does is it gets in your lungs, and it basically suffocates people to death. It must be a miserable way to die. 'Cause not being able to take a full breath and being out of breath just walking 20 feet, or 30 feet, was fucking brutal.
"I've been sick a bunch of times, man. This was the sickest I've ever been in my life. It was completely debilitating."
Dukes later said he's not 100% recovered from the experience. Rather, "I'm probably ninety percent. I still have headaches every day — I get a headache if I strain myself."
