My story starts Feb. 15 at a South Florida Sun Sentinel going-away party for nine colleagues who’d accepted the company’s buyout offer. About 45 of us showed up, all hugs and kisses. Within five days, at least 18 of us were sick.

Some of us got sicker than others. My younger colleagues mostly got flu-like symptoms — fever, bronchitis, muscle aches. A couple of us got hit hard — spiking fever, dry cough, fatigue, shortness of breath. My symptoms felt nothing like a cold or flu. Within a day and a half, the whistle in my lungs was so loud that a friend joked I should break out the spoons for a jig. I had all the symptoms of coronavirus: a fever, cough, shortness of breath and a deep respiratory infection. At the urgent care center, the doctor diagnosed pneumonia.

A newsroom sleuth scoured Facebook and found one of our former colleagues had just returned from Asia, with a layover in China. Our colleague’s post showed an airport and airplane awash in face masks. Upon arriving in New York, our friend self-quarantined as directed for three days and developed no symptoms. Seven days later, our colleague was wrapped in our embrace.

I have no idea if my friend was a carrier. As my predecessor put it: “We’ll never know, but chances are good that we were among the first people in Florida to come down with the coronavirus.”

I tried to get tested. I called the Broward County Health Department, but the person on the phone wasn’t interested in our too-big-for-coincidence cluster. On learning that I had not personally traveled overseas and my fever was below 100.4 degrees, neither was she interested in me.

After a 10-day antibiotic regimen, I felt well enough to travel to D.C. for a friend’s memorial and work in the office for a couple of days. But mostly I worked from home, too tired to make the trek. After two-and-a-half weeks of symptoms that hung on, my doctor prescribed a second drug regimen.

Until now, the only time I ever remember paying close attention to my breathing was when I tried meditation and yoga. But one night, my breathing was so labored, it was all I could hear. I felt like I needed an oxygen mask.

In China, people with pneumonia are included in the 80 percent of cases considered “minor,” a New York Times science reporter said on “The Daily” podcast.

“Even if you have a very mild case, you’re going to go in with all the other mild cases because they know cases can crash,” said Donald G. McNeil Jr. “It’s a pretty common phenomenon that people are going along OK with some breathing difficulty, and then in the second week, they crash. Their oxygen saturation drops, and they need oxygen.”

On Friday, I became determined to get the test. I did so even knowing the virus’ RNA lasts only a median of 20 days in respiratory samples, Chinese doctors wrote in The Lancet. But they also said it could last as long as 37 days.

It had been 27 days since my possible exposure. Still, I wanted to know, am I contagious after taking antibiotics? How much longer will this last? And is there a possibility it’s going to get worse?

But getting tested is impossible.

I called the COVID-19 Call Center on the Florida Department of Health’s website. The nice woman on the phone said the hotline was a call center, not a medical center. She encouraged me to call the county health department.

I called the Broward health department again, but after hearing I hadn’t traveled or come in contact with a known case, the operator said I should call my doctor or a commercial lab, either Quest or LabCorp.

I called Quest, and was told I needed a physician’s order. My doctor called in the order, but when I called to make an appointment at Quest, I was told my doctor had to submit the sample. I called my doctor’s office, but they said they didn’t have the kit.

I called Dr. Shahnaz Fatteh, president of the Broward County Medical Association. “We’re all scrambling to find out how to get the test kits,” she said.

I called Jaime Caldwell, president of the South Florida Hospital Association. He’d previously told me hospitals hope people with minor cases don’t fill up their emergency rooms, potentially infecting others or consuming resources needed by the sickest. “But you have to do what’s best for you.”

At the hospital, I answered YES to most of the screening questions. In the last 14 days: I’d been sick; I’d had a low-grade fever; I’d had trouble breathing; I’d been around others who were sick. As to whether I’d been exposed to a COVID-19 patient, I said “maybe.”

I was placed in a room and treated by people wearing extra protection. A nurse swabbed both nostrils high enough to “tickle your brain,” then swabbed my throat with a third Q-tip like stick.

Coincidentally, while the doctor was examining me, I received a call from Jared Moskowitz, Florida’s director of emergency management. I promised to call him back. I asked the doctor: “What would you ask him?” His answer: When are we going to get the tests we need?

Testing is the first line of defense in any epidemic. There’s no way to know the breadth of this epidemic by testing only the sickest of the sick. Yet the day before my ER visit, Florida had tested fewer than 500 people.

Late Friday, I received an email saying my test results were available. The results said the coronavirus had not been detected. “A “not detected” result indicates the absence of specific viral and bacterial nucleic acids, or the organism load is below the detectable limit of the assay.”

The doctor told me it’s impossible to know if I had the virus because an antibody test is not yet available, so we’ll never know for sure. But as Kingsley said, I believe we were among Florida’s first coronavirus patients - and it shouldn’t have been so hard to find out.