Photograph by Morgana Wingard

WESTCHESTER, NEW YORK: I know exactly where I caught it. One weekend we went to a friend's house for a memorial luncheon for a friend’s father-in-law. The following Wednesday I found out that two of the people there had tested positive from exposure the week before to someone in our temple who had caught it. On Monday that man was intubated with double pneumonia. Unfortunately, he was all over the news. They said he infected 37. But, really that man was infected by someone else too. So, it's no one's fault. 

No one was talking about COVID-19 before that. It was so distant then. I'm a dentist. In December I had a new patient who was Asian and he was telling me a little about himself. He said, “I'm from Wuhan. You know the area in China where they're talking about this new virus.” It didn't mean much to me at the time. I remember thinking to myself, I guess I gotta read more newspapers. I keep thinking about that moment because now everybody knows what it is. It didn't seem like it was here yet.

On Tuesday my husband had a fever. He said, “I think I have it.” I made fun of him saying he couldn’t -- that just because he had a fever didn’t mean he had COVID. He replied, “Sandra when was the last time I had a fever?” 

Wednesday, while I was at work, I got a phone call from her friend telling me two people who were at our luncheon on Saturday are positive. You should come home. I came home and I remember thinking, Oh my goodness, I'm going to be home now. You know, I'm going to be home doing nothing for two days, two and a half days, Thursday, Friday till I go back to work Monday. Oh my God I need a project. I need to feel like I’m being productive -- never thinking I’d be home this long.

What you think is the worst thing becomes nothing compared to something else that happens. 

Then, I started getting headaches Wednesday night. On Thursday I woke up with this terrible headache. I literally had to sneak the thermometer away from my husband so he wouldn't think I thought I had it. I spoke to my best friend who said the same exact things. She went into a closet to take her temperature because she didn't want her husband to know yet.

I put the headache symptom on the WhatsApp group and some people side texted me, “Oh my God, I'm having headaches too.” Someone else called me and said, “Don't worry about it. Headaches are not part of it. You know, I tutored a family. He was in the center of the news and headaches are not part of it. Don't worry, it's not a symptom.” But, now they know it is. 

I told my husband Friday morning when I developed a fever as well.

That’s when I really believed I had it. 

Because I'm from New Rochelle, we were all quarantined at the same time and we made this WhatsApp group which consists of 256 people. There were many more in quarantine but the WhatsApp chat only allows for that number of people. We exchanged information and symptoms and all that. So, I basically knew from some other people, even though we were some of the first to get tested, what it was. They said, “You're going to have someone come to your house. They were going to be put in this hazmat garb outside your house” -- which is a little strange to neighbors because New Rochelle was the only place with known community spread in New York at the time and you don't want your neighbors walking their dogs to see these hazmat people outside your house wearing disposable gowns and face masks and eye shields and gloves. 

They were the nicest two people - very courteous. We did it in our dining room, each one of us, one at a time. The testing - yah slightly uncomfortable. The nasal swab made you really want to sneeze. Then the throat swab is like a strep test. But what was so interesting to me was they weren't these clinical people. They were just sweet warm people who came to test us. So, it wasn't a bad experience to get tested. 

After I was tested that night, that evening I lost my taste and smell.  That was different than anything I've ever had. On the WhatsApp group people were discussing if this happened from being tested or if it was a symptom of the virus. It took a long time to find out because that was one of the symptoms that nobody was discussing. 

I kind of feel like if in Italy or China, they would have told people that that was the symptoms people would've known in February that they had. I heard so many people had similar symptoms -- including loss of taste and smell. All these other symptoms, runny nose and a cough and a fever, you can have with most other viruses. Losing taste and smell -- now you really don't hear that often often. So had they told people that that was a big symptom, even though not everybody has it, people would have known earlier on and maybe they would've started testing earlier for this. 

I believe that 50% of our community is infected. No one understood how this happened unless you understand modern Orthodox and our community. We have such a wonderful community and everyone helps each other and we’re always together.  We go to temple most Saturdays. After that everyone usually groups into each other's houses for lunch with three other families. And the kids all play together. In those few weeks we had a bunch of bar mitzvahs and funerals unfortunately. You have a community who is very close knit. That’s why it spread so quickly. 

We need a wake up call. I believe we all want to spend more time with family and that work isn't the only thing. We realize we need friendships and God and to just take a breather. But at the same time, every hundred years we need that wake up call if not sooner. I think we just fall back into our same routines now. Whenever I go to a funeral, someone always says, “I'm going to try to take more time to appreciate the friends that are alive that I have rather than mourning when they leave too soon.” But it's still  something that you want to do. It is so difficult to enforce it. I would love it if we all learn to actually take a little more time out for family and for friends. Our community was always like this. So we'll continue the same way. I don't think we will change a thing.

It really undermined my entire thinking. The whole going into quarantine is nothing I can relate to because I’ve never had to do that. I’ve never had to see the world so down like this. It was very isolating at first because I have my inlaws and my sister in laws and brother-in-laws in different communities. And to them, you know, there was a different Jewish holiday of Purim that second week, March 8th, March 9th, and everything continued as usual. There were still gatherings. No one believed it would come to any other community so we were this separate community where Oh my God, they're all infected, you know. The Daily News wrote New Roch-HELL. That’s lovely for our real estate prices. It was very separating at first. It was actually a horrible feeling. You didn't want to tell anybody outside your community because they would look at you like, “What are you dirty?” I would hope years from now they realize that we had such high numbers because we were being tested while no other places were being tested to see that it was all over the place.

Right now the hardest part is realizing the moments in my kid's life which they’ll never get back. They miss these milestones.  I'll miss work, but I think I’ll be working again hopefully. They won't get this back.

The best part has really probably been the family time. Now I'll have the memory of that. With my first daughter going off to collect I was already starting to mourn that I wouldn't have my three kids sleeping in their beds upstairs and having every room filled. So you do get certain things back again because of this.

Even though our New Rochelle community got a really bad rap in the beginning, I believe we will be part of the cure. Thank God our community was able to save lives. Because we were some of the first to get it, that means we were some of the first to recover and donate our blood and plasma.

Sandra is a wife, mother of three girls, and dentist in Westchester, New York.