“You’ll be so lonely,” says Nicole Gadon, 68, who was required to stay inside her house after testing positive for tuberculosis in 2014. If you come down with (or are exposed to) certain communicable diseases, including cholera, diphtheria, infectious tuberculosis, plague, smallpox, yellow fever, viral hemorrhagic fever, SARS or a pandemic influenza, the state and federal governments can force you into quarantine and isolation. Often you will be told to hole up in your house or apartment until you are no longer deemed a threat.

If you live with others, you will most likely be told to sleep in separate rooms and avoid physical contact. Cohabitants should be tested regularly. Gadon’s husband at the time stayed with her during her six months in isolation. Each day they briefly overlapped in the kitchen but were otherwise apart. Sometimes the desire for human contact will overwhelm you. One night, early on, when she was gravely ill and felt she might die, Gadon went up to her husband’s bedroom and asked to lie next to him. He declined to let her sleep there for the night. “I really just wanted to be hugged,” she says. Gadon slept next to her cat, Izzy. “Get an indoor pet,” she says.

Every day, a nurse came to take Gadon’s vitals, watch her take medication and collect coughed-up phlegm (Gadon needed three consecutive clean tests to go free). Cover your mouth when you cough. Wash your hands often. Noninfected people near you should wear an air-purifying respirator like an N95 mask, and you should wear a surgical mask. Keep windows open for ventilation. If you need to call the police, firefighters or paramedics, warn them about your condition.

Quarantine will strain relationships. “It definitely puts stress on a marriage,” says Gadon, who was divorced not long after her diagnosis. Don’t be ashamed. Find others who have survived your disease and connect with them online. Gadon wishes she had said yes when her brother offered to fly across the country to stand 15 feet away on her lawn and keep her company. She wishes she had found a way to see her grown son. If she had to do it again, Gadon says she would let people support her. “Ask for help,” she says.