As the novel coronavirus began making its way through Connecticut in March, the Massad family watched from their home — where they would be in quarantine for the next five weeks — as a “1” began to pop up on a map of Waterford on the nightly news.

One case of COVID-19 had been reported in their town. And it was in their house.

Greg Massad, a lawyer, husband and father of five, had begun to feel feverish while picking up a coffee in New London on March 18. He felt hotter and hotter throughout the day, with his temperature spiking to over 100 degrees. It would be nearly two weeks before that fever broke.

Soon after, a dry cough set in that he said caused his head to ache relentlessly. His sense of smell disappeared. A drive-thru test at Lawrence + Memorial Hospital confirmed fears that he had contracted COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Over the next five weeks, it would course through most of the Massad family members one by one.

As soon as he recognized he was sick, Greg was sectioned off from his family. His three adult children — Alexa, 23, Erica, 23 and Matt, 20 — were home from their respective cities and schools to ride out the pandemic with their parents, not knowing they were walking right into its grip.

Shut in his bedroom, visited only by his wife for meal deliveries and temperature checks, Greg’s fever continued to climb. On the 12th night, it spiked as high as 102.8 degrees.

“I just wanted to make it through the night without going to the hospital,” he said. "I knew I had to go if my fever went to 103, and it got close.”

Greg didn't end up going to the hospital, and the next morning, he said, he felt “like a million bucks.”

“It went out as fast as it came in,” he said.

His wife, Kristin, was the next to get sick after caring for her ailing husband. After their son, Matt, headed back to Pennsylvania, two of their daughters lost their senses of taste and smell.

Greg was the only one to actually be tested for the virus but, in the weeks since their illness, Kristen, Erica, Olivia and Alexa have all tested positive for antibodies to the virus.

“It apparently ran through everybody except my youngest, who didn’t have the antibodies,” Greg said. Sophia, the youngest, stayed in her room during the majority of their time in quarantine, her mom said. The family was still being extra cautious with her health.

Since they self-quarantined immediately, they don’t think anyone was infected by their family, Greg said. But the virus, he said, is easier to contract than he thinks a lot of people realize.

“You can get it anywhere,” he said. “People need to recognize that you can get it anywhere.”

Looking back, after trying to do some contact tracing, he thinks he picked up the virus while shopping at a mall. “It was a very everyday situation, so I think people do have to be concerned about credit card machines and gas pumps and cellphones and door handles,” he said. “It was a thing that probably everybody encounters many times a day.”

Facing uncertainty as a family

When he heard the first Waterford case reported on the news and knew it was his, Greg said it was “surreal,” though his kids “thought it was kind of cool.”

When Gov. Ned Lamont announced the shutdown of the state, Greg started to feel even more concerned. He had to stop watching the news, he said, as reporters shared the stories of patient after patient losing their battle with the disease.

“I had a fever for 12 days, which leads to a lot of uncertainty that takes a toll on you,” he said. “And it took a toll on my family because once I found out, they couldn’t leave.”

For his wife and daughters, who had few symptoms, the experience wasn’t nearly as scary.

Alexa, a law student at Quinnipiac, said that as a food lover, she was most worried she'd lose her taste permanently. She couldn’t taste or smell anything, whereas her father said his sense of smell was heightened but everything smelled the same.

“I had one smell, no matter what it was, whether I was smelling roses or a sewer, it was the same smell,” Greg said. “And it wasn’t a good smell.”

For more than five weeks, the family survived off of takeout and grocery deliveries left in their driveway by Peapod and Greg’s sister. They didn’t leave the house once.

Kristin, who took care of her husband while trying to keep her children safe, healthy and entertained, said that having her husband have one of the first reported cases in the area made it a lot harder.

“It was just the very beginning of everything and we didn’t know what was going to go on, we didn’t really know what was going to happen a couple of hours from then or next day,” she said. “It was nerve-racking and scary, I was seeing him sick and at the same time watching TV and seeing all the numbers and seeing the ships go into New York, and all the chaos, and we just didn’t know anything because it was so new.”

But despite the severity of the situation, Kristin said, she and her daughters made the best of it, especially after her husband started to take a turn for the better.

“I hate to say that it was pleasant, but it really was pleasant,” Kristin said. “I enjoyed the time with the kids.”

With all her daughters home, she said they had fun playing card and dice games, watching Netflix and picking up new hobbies like crochet and needlepoint.

“I think what took a lot of the pressure off was knowing that you weren’t missing out on anything, everybody was quarantined in their house,” Kristin said. “Everybody looked out for each other and we did a lot of things together.”

The experience seems to have changed their family dynamic for good, Greg said.

“Our life has changed a little bit, going home every night and having dinner together every night has become much more of a routine,” he said. “There’s a realization of what’s important; clearly, things can change in a minute.”

Inching back to 'normal life'

On May 20, the first day of the first phase of Connecticut’s reopening, Greg and Alexa were eager to get out of the house. The pair had lunch at Muddy Waters on Bank Street in New London — the coffee shop Greg was leaving when he first felt sick back in March. They sat at a table on the sidewalk, eating and drinking coffee, and later went out to dinner. Since they’d already survived the virus, they said they felt “a little bit of immunity.”

“The inch back to normal life is nice to see,” Alexa said that day. “I think we’re still being pretty cautious because even if we’re hopefully better off than people who haven’t had it, we’re still keeping our guard up.”

Her father said they also wanted to support local businesses trying to recover from the economic impact of the pandemic.

As the state continues its reopening, now in phase two, Greg and his family have been leaving their home, dining out and even traveling to Florida for business after their long stint indoors. But having survived the virus, they’re urging everyone who hasn’t yet had it to stay alert and take every precaution possible.

Greg said he hopes anyone who has tested positive for the antibodies will donate their plasma and anyone who shows symptoms will self-quarantine immediately.

“People have to remember that this happened from one case, one case in the U.S. and one case in every country, and look what happened,” he said. “This has shown everybody just how quick something like this can go worldwide. We always washed our hands, and we were always germaphobes, and we still got it. All the surfaces we touch every day, you never know what is on them.”

As places continue to reopen, the Massads said they hope everyone will be diligent about wearing masks, washing their hands and sanitizing surfaces.

“You have to be even more aware and more careful than you were in March,” Greg said. “While it's great to have everything open, you have to be concerned about everything coming back.”

Until you have the virus, he said, you never know how hard it’s going to hit you.

“You don’t know if you’re going to be able to handle it,” he said. “Until you have it, you don’t know if it's going to take a turn for the worse or not, so why risk it?”

t.hartz@theday.com