SEATTLE — A Seattle woman who tested positive for the coronavirus is warning others to take social distancing seriously. Susan Manegold said being forced to social distance means she hasn't been able to visit her daughter in the hospital.
It’s one of the most difficult things a parent could hear.
“She’s a 41-year-old healthy girl wouldn’t wake up from a nap and, and was discovered that she couldn't wake up and she had a brain bleed from a tumor,” said Manegold, whose daughter Lauren was rushed to the hospital on March 10.
“My family is hysterical,” she said.
Susan said while everything was happening, she stayed home with her granddaughter because she didn’t feel right.
“The first day I kept thinking in the middle of this unbelievable shock. I'm thinking, am I feeling like I'm sick?”
Susan said she had a fever, but no other symptoms related to the coronavirus. She knew the dangers and isolated herself and the hospital would not let her visit her daughter because of her symptoms.
“For ten days, I'm telling everybody there's no way I've got anything because I only have a fever," she explained.
Susan eventually did get tested for coronavirus and got her results back on Friday and they were positive. Susan said she has an idea of where she may have caught it.
“I’m in a band. On Saturday, March 7, we’re at McMenamins, my band, and I have a great time. That night, two days later, March 9. Everyone feels fine, we're all together. The very next day, I learned later, everyone came down with a fever," she said.
Susan said she and another bandmate have tested positive for coronavirus and they're unsure about the others.
“I want to really get the message out there that if anybody is positive, you have a big responsibility to talk to anyone you've been in touch with,” she said. "A few people I've known didn't say anything. They were worried about the whole Leopard thing. Like ‘oh you were the one who had it, you spread it.’ We got to get rid of that.”
Susan said she was instructed by doctors after her diagnosis to disclose to any and everyone she had been in contact with that she tested positive. She said the hardest part was being able to take the test. The test itself, she said, was relatively quick and painless and she got her results the next day.
Susan said it's important for people to social distance and to take it seriously. She explained because there is so much unknown, it’s not worth the risk that you could be carrying the virus or pass it to someone else.
“Assume everyone’s got it. You go to a gas station, assume the [person] who used the pump before you had it. Use gloves, wipe it down, just assume everyone’s got it," she said.
Her biggest concern now is for her family, who came in close contact with her before she showed symptoms and her daughter who remains in the hospital.
“Thank God I isolated, thank God the hospital did not allow me to go in there because at first, I was upset because it's my baby and she's going through the worst thing in her life,” she said.
Susan said her husband who was originally helping her around the house when she was isolating is now showing symptoms, as is her other daughter.
As for Lauren, the one in the hospital, they are still waiting to hear back about her diagnosis. Susan said she is not sure if they tested her for the coronavirus.
