Rita Wilson Details 'Extremely Painful' Coronavirus Battle With Husband Tom Hanks

Rita Wilson and her husband Tom Hanks were two of the first celebrities to come forward after testing positive for coronavirus. Now, the actress is sharing new details of their "extremely painful" battle with COVID-19. In an exclusive with Entertainment Tonight, Wilson admits, "it wasn't a walk in the park" at all. Wilson and Hanks previously revealed their cases when they traveled Down Under so that Hanks could film a new movie.

"We were in Australia and didn't have access to a lot of American news, so we weren't aware of the impact that it had in terms of, gee, maybe this thing is serious," Wilson said. "This was before we knew we had to wear masks or anything like that. Nobody was even talking about that, so it wasn't really until 10 days into it we thought, 'Oh, OK.' I think it was that combination of NBA [shutdown] and also us getting it, and us getting it together and not having it be the easiest illness. Like some people had worse symptoms, some people had lesser symptoms, but for us, it wasn't a walk in the park.

"First you thought, 'Oh, I've got a fever,' but the chills then added onto that, those were really tough, and [my] body aching enormously, way more than the flu," she went on to say. "Then, when we were hospitalized, our temperature was being monitored, our organs were being monitored, our blood was being monitored. We were a little bit concerned that we didn't realize it was going to be as serious as it was."

Wilson shares that the entire time she also had a "headache, that was extremely painful" to endure. "I also had vertigo and lost my sense of taste and smell," she recalled. "At that point, in March, [the latter] wasn't really a symptom that people were aware of or that doctors were aware of. It wasn't until about a week later, I had said to my doctor, 'I can't taste anything and I can't smell anything, is this normal?' A week later, he said, 'We're starting to hear reports of that.' So it was kind of like a compounded experience where it started out one way and things kept building and being put on top of it."

Finally, Wilson offered an update on how she is doing almost six months later, admitting she is "thankful" for being healthy now. "I remember when I was growing up and my parents always used to say, 'If you have your health, you have everything," she said. "When you're young and you hear that, you're like, 'Yeah, yeah, whatever.' But now that you have your health and you've gone through a couple of things, you're like, 'Yes. that actually does mean something.' You can pretty much handle anything if you have your health."