(WTNH) — The coronavirus timeline began in China in late December 2019.

That was the same time Connecticut Sun Forward Theresa Plaisance was playing there.

In early December, she ended up in a Chinese hospital with all the symptoms of COVID-19.

She’s been home in New Orleans since early January and said the experience wasn’t a pleasant one.

“I’ve never felt that sick before,” Plaisance said. “Generally, I’m a healthy person.”

Plaisance spent a few days in the hospital diagnosed with pneumonia and an unknown virus.

“I was just extremely weak, and my fever was really high and everything that went with that — body ache, chills, headache. When I was getting wheel-chaired into the hospital, I almost started crying because I was just that miserable and that much in pain. I was so sick I didn’t even care what they were giving me; I was like whatever you got, give it to me.”

Plaisance said she was on a steady diet of IVs and some other medications.

“The Chinese hospitals are a lot different than hospitals we have here, they’re not very clean. They wheel-chaired me into a room and a woman got out of the bed and they said, ‘you lay here’ and said, ‘you’re not gonna change the sheets?’ And they were like, ‘no,’ and I’m like, ‘I’m not lying down. I don’t care how sick I feel; I’m not lying in this bed. Finally, they got me a room that no one uses, and they put me in that room.”

Her fever started on a Tuesday broke on a Friday. She played in a game the next day.

“I played in a game; I didn’t feel good, but I played in a game, but my lungs weren’t ready for what a basketball game consisted of.”

She played 40 minutes in that game. Her symptoms eventually subsided; however, she said the one that lingered the longest was the shortness of breath.

The Chinese league took their break and early January and never resumed.

Plaisance said she has spoken to teammates in China, and they tell her it’s getting better, and people are starting to go out and do things socially again.