'Girls' star and creator Lena Dunham has shared her story on Instagram of contracting and surviving the novel coronavirus COVID-19.<br />CNN reports Dunham said she was able to avoid going to a hospital because a doctor instructed her on how to care for herself.<br />Johns Hopkins University data says more than 4.5 million people have been infected with the virus in the United States and 153,314 people have died.<br />Dunham says she became sick in mid-March with symptoms including aching joints, fatigue, fever, numbness, a cough, and loss of taste and smell.<br />It felt like I was a complex machine that had been unplugged and then had my wires rerouted into the wrong inputs. Lena Dunham<br />She tested negative for the virus a month later, but Dunham says many symptoms persisted. Doctors don't know yet what her continued recovery will look like.<br />Dunham says her experience with the chronic illness Ehlers-Danlos syndrome helped her cope with the prolonged impacts.
