The scariest times were the nights I woke up at 2 or 3 in the morning with my long-sleeved shirts drenched in sweat.

In a fever-induced haze, I stumbled to the downstairs bathroom in our house, dried off and put on a dry shirt. Then I tried to go back to sleep, wondering when this nightmare would end.

Between the fever that was later measured at almost 101 degrees (despite a steady diet of Tylenol), the headaches and the seemingly non-stop cough, I was pretty convinced I had the coronavirus.

Even scarier was the prospect that my wife and two kids most likely had it, too, although their symptoms were never nearly as bad.

This was my life about three weeks ago, before I knew for certain.

LIVING IN FEAR IN NEW YORK CITY

By the morning of March 12, I had already been at Madison Square Garden two straight nights and was apprehensive about going back for a third to cover the Seton Hall-Marquette game in the Big East Tournament.

I wasn’t sick (yet), but something in my gut told me it wasn’t a good idea to keep tempting fate by going back to the Garden and mingling with thousands of other people as the coronavirus pandemic began to escalate in New York City and around the world.

In the span of a couple of days, things got real. Quickly.

The NBA season was suspended on March 11 and the NCAA Tournament was canceled on March 12. Soon enough, every other major sporting event around the world would be canceled or postponed. Bars were closed, restaurants shifted to take-out and delivery only. People were told to work from home. Schools were shuttered. Society shut down in most places.

On March 13, my family and I left our home in New York City to escape and socially distance in South Jersey. By that point, there was a palpable fear in New York, and we felt it was the safest move to get out before it was too late. After all, as New Yorkers we spend a lot of time on subways, in taxi cabs and at public gatherings.

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I wasn’t sick, and Gov. Phil Murphy hadn’t yet asked people to stay away from their vacation homes.

But within a week of being in New Jersey, I developed headaches, a fever and a bad cough that wouldn’t quit. I did not experience the chest pain or shortness of breath that others have, which helped me stay positive. Still, my initial suspicions that something had gone wrong while I was in New York were playing out.

By March 21, I was on a regimen of Tylenol because I had a fever and couldn’t sleep through the night.

I continued to do phone interviews and write stories throughout this period, and it helped keep me sane. I coughed a lot over the phone during the interviews, which I’m sure was alarming for those on the other end of the line.

On March 24, after learning we couldn’t get tested at the local hospital because they were testing only admitted patients, my wife drove me to an urgent care facility in South Jersey, where I was tested for the virus because I had a 100.8 fever. My pulse rate was at 109. As I waited in the doctor’s office, I texted the information to my wife’s cousin, a doctor.

“Your oxygen is a little bit on the low side and your heart rate is tachycardic, especially for an athlete,” she texted back.

My mind and heart raced as I waited for the doctor to return: How sick am I going to get? When and where exactly did I get this? What does this mean for my family?

The doctor said there was no vaccine for coronavirus and she treated it like pneumonia and gave me doxycycline, an antibiotic that fights bacteria in the body, as well as something for my cough.

The experience was scary for me and my family. You don’t really know what to expect, or how it will play out. As we have all seen, this virus affects people differently.

GETTING THE CALL

For the next week, I slept on a couch in a downstairs room in our house — away from my family. Fatigued, I slept a lot. I watched movies and TV when I could keep my eyes open.

My wife and son experienced some minor symptoms but nothing major, and weren’t able to get tested. They didn’t meet the criteria because they didn’t have fevers. The doctor estimated there was a 90 percent chance my wife and kids also had the virus. Still, my wife was a saint and cooked for me and left food by the door.

On April 1, a full week after being tested, I got a call from the urgent care facility, confirming what we all suspected: I had tested positive. I feel much better than I did a few weeks ago. That damn cough has finally receded.

Health officials told me that the people I interacted with at the Garden were outside the window of my illness. (On March 10, the night before the Big East Tournament, I went to an Allman Brothers Band tribute concert at the Garden — it was awesome — and the person I went with hasn’t reported any symptoms and feels fine.)

Luckily, I haven’t seen my 92-year-old father, who lives on his own, in more than a month. He seems to be doing OK.

DEATH ALL AROUND US

But not everyone can say the same. Three weeks ago, the 95-year-old father of a close friend of ours — a doctor — died of a heart attack, likely from the stress of being improperly cared for at a rehabilitation facility during the pandemic. Our friend was on the phone with him when her father passed, unable to see him in person due to social distancing.

The day before he passed, he told his daughter, “I want to get out of this bed, put on a HazMat suit and a mask, and help people who are sick.”

But this virus doesn’t just impact older people.

On Sunday, Anthony Causi, the longtime sports photographer for The New York Post died from the coronavirus at North Shore University Hospital. He was 48.

As of early Monday, there were nearly 22,000 recorded deaths in the U.S. and more than 550,000 cases, according to NBC News. New York City, where I have lived for about half my life, is the epicenter of the virus in the U.S. I haven’t been there in a month, but people we talk to there say it’s a dark, dark place now. Dark and quiet.

‘NORMAL’ WON’T RETURN ANYTIME SOON

My family is working on getting the antibody test, and are hopeful that we will be immune.

Still, things will never be the same for any of us. It’s hard to imagine society will return to “normal” anytime soon. Offices, schools, bars, restaurants, concerts, movies, sporting events — these things won’t be normal again at least until there’s a vaccine.

In the meantime, stay safe out there and take care of each other.

Adam Zagoria is a freelance reporter who covers Seton Hall and NJ college basketball for NJ Advance Media.

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