Justice Debra Lehrmann of Texas Supreme Court. Justice Debra Lehrmann of Texas Supreme Court.

After struggling for nearly a month with the coronavirus, Texas Supreme Court Justice Debra Lehrmann announced Wednesday she now has a negative COVID-19 test.

Lehrmann first started feeling symptoms May 11, and her negative result came around the beginning of the second week of June, she said.

The justice recalled that the first 10 to 12 days, her illness reminded her of the flu, with low grade fever, body aches and tiredness. Her husband, Greg, started recovering after that, but Lehrmann took a turn for the worse.

"My temperature went up to like 102 and it stayed between 101.5 to 102.5 for another 12 days," she said. "I was having a lot of difficulty breathing. It's hard to explain, but having to gasp for air and kind of struggle for air."

Related story: Texas Supreme Court Justice Tests Positive for Coronavirus

Lehrmann, whose neighbor loaned her an oxygen monitor early on, said she was grateful to have the device so she could monitor her oxygen levels and to know through frequent consultations with her doctor that she never needed hospitalization.

"When does a lay person know, 'Okay, it's time to go to the hospital?' If it hadn't been for that oxygen monitor, I would have definitely thought—numerous times—that it was time to go to the hospital," she said.

Some days, she could not get out of bed. Also, her doctor told her she needed to lay on her stomach so that oxygen could saturate into the depths of her lungs, rather than shallow breathes. Although she wanted to continue reading, studying and writing for work, she couldn't always do it.

"I had to take some days," Lehrmann said.

After about two weeks of being in the thick of the illness, Lehrmann noted that her fever broke and she gradually started feeling better.

Here's Lehrmann's tweet:

But she's found that it will take time for her lungs to function fully at their pre-COVID levels.

"I'm having to rehabilitate my lungs," she said. "I'm having to do a little bit of treatment to repair whatever the illness did to my lungs. Like right now: Did you hear me have to gasp for air right now? That is not normal for me."

Next, Lehrmann and her husband plan to donate plasma to health authorities who asked if they would be willing to do so in the beginning when they were first diagnosed with the virus. Also good news, Lehrmann's son, daughter-in-law and grandchild, who also contracted COVID-19, have also fully recovered and only experienced mild cases of the illness.

"They are doing great," she said.

When asked to comment on the current debate in Texas about wearing face coverings in public, Lehrmann said that as someone who had the virus and recovered, she would urge the public to do everything to reduce their risk of infection.

"It's so important that our economy get back to where it needs to be. It needs to happen in a way that people are still safe, and it seems to me from listening to the health professionals, that the way to do it is through masks, social distancing, washing our hands and being careful," Lehrmann said. "From personal experience, I know that this virus is very contagious because I know how careful we were."