LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Retired Louisville lawyer Dina Abby said she wasn’t exactly surprised when she got a call at home Thursday morning saying she tested positive for COVID-19.

She had lost her sense of smell and taste — a curious symptom of the virus — since she first came down with a headache and fever 10 days earlier.

"I tasted straight lemon juice and … nothing,” she said on Facebook. “I sprayed my perfume (Chance by Chanel) on my index finger and held it to my nose. Nothing, nada, zip."

As she’s done for 28 years, Abby, 56, had traveled to the Caribbean island of St. Martin earlier this month, where she owns a house.

When she got back, she didn’t give much thought to joining seven friends at a bar on a March 13, a Friday night. Warnings at the time said to avoid groups of 200 people, and the bar wasn’t nearly that crowded, she said.

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But within three days, everyone in the group was sick. She woke up in the middle of the night with a dry cough, a mild fever and a splitting headache.

She says she “doesn’t scare that easily” but she was concerned because she had been traveling.

She went to the Norton Immediate Care Center in Westport Village, where she said she was treated like Typhoid Mary.

"They were super, super careful," she said.

She said a doctor called her on her cellphone for her initial screening. He sent her to a testing center downtown, where a man in a protective suit met her at her car, escorted her inside, took swaps and whisked her away.

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Then Abby, who is single and has a 23-year-old daughter, holed up inside her Prospect home, where she lives alone, except for her three dogs. Waiting nine days for her results, she said it was like she was on a roller coaster.

The first four days she felt “soul-crushing fatigue.” Then she would feel better. Then the cough would return.

She couldn’t smell the strongest odors, like apple cider vinegar. And it didn’t matter if she ate a slice of pizza or a granola bar — it all tasted the same.

She lost 6 pounds. “When is that not good?”

And she said that since she couldn’t taste anything, she was able to live on “everything in my pantry that I hate.”

She learned that two of her seven friends at the bar — a couple — also tested positive for the virus. They had returned from Aruba two weeks earlier.

She said they may have spread the virus to her — or she to them.

“We will never know,” she said.

She said her daughter also got symptoms, presumably with the virus, but wasn’t badly sickened by it.

All four are recovering, she said, adding that she’s “90%” better, then coughing into the phone.

She said doctors haven't told her when her sense of smell and taste are likely to return, but Health Magazine reported that those who lose either or both should get those senses back — whether it's related to COVID-19 or another ailment.

She announced her diagnosis on Facebook and within a few hours more than 100 friends had wished her well.

One wrote: “You may not be perfect after all. First, you’re a Democrat, and now you have the virus. That being said, I still love you.”

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She said doctors told her that by Tuesday, the virus will have resolved and she’ll be free to finally leave her home.

She said she plans on seeing her two friends who were infected.

“We will all be immune,” she said.

She said she was never terrified by her plight, but said that is in part because she is lucky.

“I don’t have a family to support,” she said. “I don’t have to worry about losing my job or a mortgage payment or a car payment. Or day care. I have good health care. I was able to get tested and there was no point at which I questioned whether or not I could have accessed medical care. I’m very … privileged. Had my situation been different, I think I would have been terrified.

“Privilege is a funny thing,” she continued. “It won’t keep you from getting sick. But not having it could keep you from getting well. And it shouldn’t be that way.”

Andrew Wolfson: 502-582-7189; awolfson@courier-journal.com; Twitter: @adwolfson.