Suzanne McDonald went nearly a week without seeing her family.
The CEO and founder of Angles and Insights, a marketing firm based out of Innovate Newport, had a friend who tested positive for COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus. It wasn't until several days later—and after McDonald had picked her elderly mother up from the airport—that she learned she'd been exposed.
"On Thursday, [March 12,] I knew that my friend had gone for testing," McDonald told Rhode Island Inno last Wednesday. "At that point, it took 24 hours to get notified. I had taken my mom grocery shopping [on Friday] to help her move through the grocery store faster. We had just gotten back from grocery shopping. I got the text that the test came back positive. I got in my car and called the Department of Health."
Although she was able to get an appointment, the Department of Health, overloaded with requests, told her it would likely be two to three days before she received her test results.
In the meantime, McDonald went into self-quarantine.
McDonald moved up to the third floor of her Newport home, a space outfitted with a private bedroom and bathroom that typically only sees use when McDonald's family stays with her in the summer. She couldn't go outside; that would require her to walk through the entire house. She couldn't come face to face with her husband or 7-year-old daughter.
Still, McDonald counts herself lucky: "I have a really nice view," she said. "I can see over treetops. I can watch my husband and my daughter ride their bikes down the driveway."
"I feel like I’m living a lot of people’s future," McDonald said.
Over time, McDonald and her family developed a routine. In the mornings, McDonald's husband and daughter would call up to her third-floor quarantine suite and quip that they were preparing "room service"—what did she want to eat? (McDonald's husband's idea of cooking is "a bowl of cereal," she joked, but over the weekend, he and her daughter prepared her homemade waffles using a vintage waffle iron.)
Bringing her food was a game, one designed to make light of the situation with McDonald separated from her family.
"They bang on the door. They come to the top of the stairs. They bang on the floor and yell, 'Prisoner!'" McDonald said. "They leave it and I open the door, say 'thank you' and come get the food. I usually wash my hands and make sure I don’t really touch anything, especially my phone. I sit and eat. I move on with my day."
On nice days, McDonald would also open her third-floor window, where she could see her husband and daughter playing in the yard. They joked that McDonald would have made a perfect Rapunzel had her hair been longer.
Inside, McDonald spent much of her time on social media. From her point of view, many people were still not taking the coronavirus threat seriously, even as the number of positive cases in Rhode Island grew and the state began to shut down. Friends and business associates, too, were in "denial," she said—a dangerous thing that she, stuck in quarantine, might have the power to shake people out of.
"I don’t share a lot publicly," McDonald said. "I’m not a consummate sharer. Even for a digital marketer, it’s not really my nature to be so public. But I feel like the circumstances are thrust upon me."
McDonald posted on her personal Facebook page and shared information with the Innovate Newport network. (As of last week, Innovate Newport was open to existing members who have key fob access, and it had ramped up cleaning and canceled meetings and events.) Everyone, in the startup community and otherwise, was universally supportive.
Meanwhile, for her own business, McDonald was in "pivot mode."
For weeks beforehand, she had been shifting gears: moving events to virtual formats, communicating with clients, then working to get her clients prepared on the storm that was about to come their way.
Her brush with COVID-19 changed her perspective.
"To be frank, I have checked in with clients, but I have not been focused on work in a good week now," McDonald said. "I don't know—I feel like we're beyond money at this point. This is not a money issue. This is a lives issue. Anyone who believes that lives are more important that money, this is the time to show it. This is the manifestation of my belief that we’re going to come back."
Until that time comes, McDonald is adjusting to the new normal.
On Thursday, March 19, McDonald finally received news from the Rhode Island Department of Health: She had tested negative for COVID-19.
"The next phase is going to be moving forward," McDonald said. "How do we adjust to that? I will say, though, that before I do that, I'm going to take a couple days. I'm going to sit with my daughter. We're going to make some extra food. ... You have to think about it in phases and prioritize."
