Health |

DePaul student Nate Odenkirk, son of TV star Bob Odenkirk, talks surviving coronavirus: ‘I was lucky’

DePaul University student Nate Odenkirk didn’t expect to spend his spring break sick as he’s ever been.

“I had a very mild case of coronavirus,” Odenkirk told the Tribune. “I didn’t have to be hospitalized, and it didn’t last as long as it’s lasted for some people. But it still sucked. It still really, really hurt. There were weeks where I couldn’t really get out of bed.”

Odenkirk, a 21-year-old junior, talked to the Tribune about his experience with the coronavirus. His father, “Better Call Saul” star and Chicago-area native Bob Odenkirk, also has been sharing Nate’s story during his late-night talk-show appearances.

His throat ‘hurt like it had cancer.’

Odenkirk said he celebrated St. Patrick’s Day by attending a North Side house party. He started feeling ill a few days later, after he traveled from Chicago to Los Angeles to be with his family. He said he had a headache, cough, fever, fatigue and aches and tested positive for the coronavirus.

“I met him at the airport, and I gave him a mask, and he washed his hands with antibacterial soap and all that stuff. He woke up the next morning with a fever, and he said his throat hurt like it had cancer. He said it really hurt,” Bob Odenkirk said Monday on Conan O’Brien’s show.

Nate Odenkirk suspects he contracted COVID-19 from an ill roommate, not from the St. Patrick’s Day festivities, because as far as he knows, his fellow partygoers didn’t become sick.

He tackled schoolwork while sick.

Odenkirk, a political science major, said he was under the weather when DePaul started its week-long spring break March 21.

“Now that (school) is back, it was a slow climb up, mostly because the thing that lasted the longest was the fatigue. I’m about caught up now. I was lucky enough to have a pretty mild case, as opposed to a lot of other people,” Odenkirk said.

He feels great now.

Bob Odenkirk said his son’s illness lasted longer than the flu. “It got scarier the longer it went, and the further we got from it, I became aware that we got very lucky,” Odenkirk said last week on “The Late Late Show with James Corden.”

Nate Odenkirk said he hasn’t experienced symptoms for about two-and-a-half weeks. “I’m really back to normal, as normal as anyone can be right now. I’m feeling good.”

Odenkirk worked last summer as a production assistant on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” He plans to spend this summer in Los Angeles writing and producing a radio play.

He says young people should take coronavirus seriously.

“You can get it, and it sucks, but I listen to the scientists. I listen to what the smart people tell me, and they are saying to stay in and take this thing seriously. Unfortunately over St. Patrick’s Day I was out, and that was really before I understood the intensity of it,” Odenkirk said.

“I’d say to the people who don’t really want to abide by social distancing and all of that, you’re not missing anything. Nothing’s going on. You have nothing to gain by going out. Everything’s canceled. Not a darn thing’s happening.”

tswartz@tribpub.com