Para Snowboarder Brittani Coury Back On The Slopes After Battle With COVID-19

Brittani Coury stands at the finish line after competing in the Women's Adaptive Snowboard Final Presented by Toyota during Day 1 of the Dew Tour on Dec. 13, 2018 in Breckenridge, Colorado.

Brittani Coury was supposed to work a nursing shift on Christmas, but instead she found herself quarantined alone at home with COVID-19 eating carrots and celery for dinner.
“I couldn’t work and I couldn’t snowboard, and that’s the first time I hadn’t done either one in almost two years,” the Paralympic silver medalist said.
“Even as a healthy person, the fatigue of COVID is like nothing else. The lack of smell and taste — I have never experienced anything like that in my whole life. No taste at all. I could eat something and couldn’t tell you what it was. It could have been cardboard.” 
She tried eating everything with a discernible taste, from bacon to bananas, yet ultimately pivoted to strong-textured, healthy foods like crunchy vegetables for two weeks instead. 
After spending the end of 2020 quarantined with persistent headaches — and using that time to focus on her goals and reset mentally — she slowly returned to training in January. In the early part of the month, she took to the slopes for two hours a day, followed by a four-hour nap and awaking to wax her board before returning to bed for the night. 
By the middle of January, she was nearing 100 percent, aside from dislocating her thumb in training last week and having to coach her coach on how to put it back in for her.
However, as a nurse who closely followed all the precautions herself, she has a strong message for the rest of the population: 
“We’re still in the thick of it,” she insisted. “The after effects of this virus are like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
“Guidelines have been implemented by the (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and World Health Organization, and those guidelines must be followed for a reason. It’s not just for your own safety, but for the safety of those around you.
“A lot of people have already had COVID and now they feel like they’re invincible and can’t still transmit COVID, and that’s just not true. You can still touch a surface with COVID and transmit it to somebody who hasn’t had it.
“We are all quarantined, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still go outside and practice safe social distancing and proper hand washing to get some sunshine. If you find yourself laying in bed all day, shoot a friend a text and see if they’re doing the same thing and you can try to cheer each other up. Fortunately with technology, you can still stay connected.”
Coury is accustomed to dealing with hiccups in her life, having had to walk on crutches for more than three years before her leg amputation because of bone spurs and ankle problems. Luckily, she was only seriously sick with COVID-19 for two weeks and the lessons she learned a decade ago proved valuable.
“This has made me appreciate the things I took for granted,” she said. “I just had to keep focusing on something positive or what I was going to do next. Setting small goals is not a bad thing.”
As if dealing with COVID-19 wasn’t enough, Coury also fractured her spine and pelvis in a January training run, but was able to get back out on the slopes — albeit with a brace — by the end of the month.
As a healthcare worker, Coury was able to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in January. With the world championships and Paralympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 test event cancelled, she will likely not compete this season, but will continue training five days a week with Team Utah and working as nurse the other two days.
With her own battle with COVID-19 in the rear view, Coury believes the rest of the world will round the corner soon.
“It’s just temporary. We’re going to get through it,” Coury said. “2020 was such a hard year, but we’re going to get through it in 2021. The vaccine’s out and there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Just hold onto that.”