Brandon Belt battled Covid, mono while coming back from heel surgery

Giants first baseman Brandon Belt is currently rehabbing from offseason heel surgery. He has yet to play in a spring training game but met with media Saturday to discuss his offseason rehab and the unforeseen health issues he faced before reporting to Spring Training.

Belt said:

“I feel good right now … But a few weeks ago i got mono, and it hit me pretty hard. I was in bed for like seven or eight days, I couldn’t get out of bed. I would get up to see my family, and then I’d get right back in bed. I was probably in bed most of the day, the good majority of the day except for maybe an hour or two. Then once I got over the sickness part, it was pretty tough to get over the feeling of weakness my body had. Just the lack of stamina, the lack of energy, the lack of strength, I’ve been dealing with that the last couple of weeks.”

Mononucleosis wasn’t the only health problem Belt dealt with while rehabbing. Before he was in bed with mono, he battled Covid for weeks beforehand. He said:

“I got [Covid-19] back in January, and I honestly didn’t even know I had it, I just knew I had been exposed. I went to get tested so that I can go around my family and make sure everybody was safe. I got tested one day and I tested positive, didn’t really have any symptoms at first, until I reached the end of my quarantine. When I was working out, I started feeling really winded, really light-headed, really dizzy and lost all energy after about 10 minutes of working out. I had to deal with that for about three or four weeks, and right at the end of that three to four weeks is when I got mono, so all that kind of came together, and I got hit pretty hard.”

The number one priority for Belt this offseason was rehabbing from heel surgery in October. Recovering from surgery is challenging in and of itself, and became even more difficult while battling two brutal sicknesses. Belt said:

“With all of this going on in the past couple of months, I was pretty concerned with how the heel was going to rehab as well, but honestly it’s going great. I haven’t gotten out there to do a lot of things i wanted to do throughout those couple weeks, but it’s still been loosening up. It feels great, it just feels so much better compared to last year, and now it’s just a matter of getting the strength back in my foot and doing day-to-day activities so that i can build the strength and the stamina up in my foot in order to go a full game. I don’t think I’m too far away, I feel good and optimistic about my foot, I think it’s going to be a lot better than it was last year.”

Now that Belt is healthy and back on the field, his focus is building up strength lost while battling Covid and mono. The Giants first baseman is making progress and will work hard to be ready for opening day, although there is a chance that he may end up missing the first week or two of the season.

Belt said:

“The good news is, now I feel pretty dang good, and every couple of days I’m taking huge jumps forward. I feel like I’m pretty close to getting back to normal. It was kind of a long ordeal, and it obviously wasn’t that fun, but right now I feel like I’m getting back on track.”