Town leaders come back into the light
INSIDE: Surviving COVID-19
Mayor Robert “Bob” Viglione walked upstairs in his home for the first time in more than three weeks.
He had quarantined himself in a basement room of his house so as not to infect his family after showing symptoms of COVID-19.
Not long after his self-quarantine, he learned that he had tested positive for the disease, he said.
His wife, Linda Viglione, vividly remembers getting the news. She was sitting in a car in a Walmart parking lot when her husband’s doctor called, looking for Bob Viglione, but instead reaching his wife, who said she broke down and cried.
“I was petrified. I thought he was going to die,” she said.
Isolation
A constant sense of fear and uncertainty accompanied the next few weeks.
Bob Viglione worried that he’d be taken to the hospital, never see his loved ones again and end up in a
“cooler,” he said.
Even though he has a will, he wrote out a list of instructions for his wife to follow in case he died.
“You don’t know if you’re going to be here the next day,” said Viglione, who is 73 and diabetic. “It’s scary, and I don’t want anyone else to have it.”
As her husband struggled with the virus, Linda Viglione was terrified of getting the disease, especially since her 1 1⁄2-month-old great grandson lived in the house. She incessantly wiped down doorknobs and washed her hands, she said.
Bob Viglione described how she brought him meals: She would open the door, quickly put food inside his room and then hurry away to avoid infection.
Even as she was afraid of getting sick, Linda Viglione was also frustrated that she could not be with her husband of 52 years.
“We’ve never really been apart for a long time,” she said. “I couldn’t stand not being with him and not being able to help him.”
The isolation was also difficult for Viglione, who said he had never