The first to be tested for coronavirus among his Milwaukee Bucks teammates, Donte DiVincenzo discusses his experience of the swab test.
It seems like a long time ago now, but NBA fans are unlikely to ever forget the particularly sudden and dramatic fashion in which the coronavirus brought the NBA to a halt.
With Rudy Gobert‘s positive test result coming back just before tip off in the Utah Jazz’s game against the Oklahoma City Thunder, the game was dramatically called off and the season was simultaneously out on hold.
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The Milwaukee Bucks may have had the night off, but they were preparing to play the Boston Celtics, a recent opponent of Utah’s, in a nationally televised matchup on the Thursday. As reports of positive tests began to trickle out from across the NBA, it became clear that all of the league’s teams needed to be tested, and the Bucks were no different on that front.
As the league’s policy changed in regard to disclosing details of testing, or in fact the results, there has been very little information about how that experience played out for Milwaukee’s players.
That is, until now.
Speaking with Mike Christman, a Milwaukee Respiratory Therapy Instructor as a part of CloseUp360’s Hoopers Meet Heroes series, Bucks guard Donte DiVincenzo discussed his experience of getting tested, while also revealing that he was the first of Milwaukee’s players to undergo the swab test:
"“When everything hit, kind of throughout the league, we got tested. So, we were fortunate enough to get tested early. And I can tell you, the testing is not fun! The nasal swab…I had no idea…and I was the first one on the team to get tested. I’d assumed that people were before me, and the doctor was like, ‘You’re the first one’. And I said, ‘What are we doing here?’ And he said, ‘Just tilt your head back and we’re going to go all the way in there.’ It wasn’t comfortable, to say the least.”"
It’s no secret at this point that the swab test for COVID-19 is particularly invasive and far from a pleasant experience, and DiVincenzo certainly only reinforced that notion with his own description. Still, as if any other reason was needed to try to avoid this virus at all costs, the test itself offers one.
DiVincenzo had a much more extensive conversation with Christman, which went beyond discussing his own testing experience to cover Christman’s work instructing other healthcare professionals how to use ventilators, with the full 20-minute discussion available via CloseUp360’s YouTube channel.
For more information about COVID-19, visit the website for the CDC, WHO, or the website for your state’s Department of Health.