This article has been medically reviewed by Kelli Peterson, M.D., M.P.H., Department of Internal Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospital.

On Friday, March 6, I was sitting in my living room when I received a voicemail message with an urgent tone that simply read, "Call me." It was then that I learned that I had tested positive for the new coronavirus, also known as COVID-19. It was a good experience, although I'm mostly fine now, just a little short of breath and occasionally coughing.

Here's how it all happened: on Tuesday, February 25, I was having lunch with seven others at a restaurant. I later learned that one of us was infected. I and two others had become ill by that Friday. Their symptoms were very mild, only a short fever. In my case, it was a bit more severe.

On Friday, February 28, I woke up with a sore throat and headache. I work from home and by noon I felt so bad that I had to stop working. At 2 pm I had chills and body aches and a slight fever of 100.2°F. He went to bed at 3:00 PM and remained there until the next day. Initially I thought it was the flu (open in new tab).

I live near Seattle and the day I became ill, I learned that someone in the area had contracted COVID-19. I also read that the person was not related to anyone in the infected country overseas, but was suspected to be infected from someone in the area.On Saturday, February 29, I went to a clinic near my home and had my temperature taken again (100.5 degrees). The nurse who examined me gave me Tamiflu, an antiviral drug for the flu.

It was then that I thought of the new coronavirus.

I was really concerned, but she said I didn't meet the criteria for testing.

At the time, you had to have been in contact with someone who was under investigation for the disease or had recently traveled to China. She specifically told me that if I wanted to be tested for the flu, I could go to the urgent care center. This was because the place was crowded with other flu patients and there was a risk of infecting others or being exposed to the virus that other people had. So I stayed home.

The nurse also recommended that I enroll online in the Seattle Flu Study (opens in new tab).

This is a research project, and if you qualify, they send you a kit and ask you to stick a swab up your nose and mail it in. (There was a subsequent report (opens in new tab) that they had started testing samples for COVID-19 against federal guidelines.) I am not sure if the nurse knew that by enrolling me in the study I would be tested for the novel coronavirus, but I am grateful that she pointed me in that direction.

Less than two hours later, a FedEx person came to my door with a swab kit. It was a Saturday, so it was Monday, March 2, when I mailed the samples.

The lady told me to call her back and I had a gut feeling something was up. When the call connected, she told me that I was COVID-19 positive.

The woman who broke the news to me was wonderful. She was calm, asked who I had been in contact with, and told me about the quarantine. I was instructed to stay in quarantine until 72 hours after the fever broke or 7 days after the first symptoms appeared, whichever was later. At that point, I had already been in self-isolation for a week. Since I am a copy editor, I always worked from home and was able to continue once I was feeling better.

I have a husband and two children, ages 7 and 10, and fortunately they are not infected. Since the new coronavirus was (and in many ways still is) unknown territory when I got my test results, I stayed in my bedroom and isolated myself from everyone for the first 72 hours of my illness. In retrospect, I think this helped lower my risk of infection.

Nevertheless, the health department offered my family a 14-day self-quarantine. That means not leaving the house. The quarantine is over, but I still haven't left the house, partly because I feel like the scientific evidence is up in the air as to how long the new coronavirus will remain infectious.

We haven't kissed or hugged yet, and that's hard. We have a family Clorox wipe down party; my 7 year old daughter loves it and has been wiping down doorknobs, handles, sinks, etc. as a weekly chore since she was 6. I would like to think that perhaps this has contributed in some small way to the containment of the virus in our home.

To be honest, illness has never been so bad for me. I had the flu a few years ago, but that was worse; when I had COVID-19, I experienced shortness of breath, which convinced me of the fact that I might have it. I felt a little scared, like I could still breathe but not enough. I am typically healthy, and when I do get sick, I recover quickly. It's a similar experience to when I get a cold or the flu.

I was on the phone for hours. It was difficult to know that I was disrupting and uprooting people's lives. But they were so nice and thanked me for telling them. The experience was more stressful than I expected and honestly more difficult than the disease itself. [My community was amazing and incredibly supportive, with many people asking me if I needed to drop off food and supplies (open in new tab).

It is those whose health is already compromised in some way that I am most concerned about, and it is for them that we all need to take the steps we can to contain this virus as quickly as possible. Please consider refraining from attending the event, especially if you have a fever or symptoms. We all need to do what we can to keep others safe.