Live Coverage of Covid-19’s Impact in the U.S.

The Wilkinson family — two parents and four teenage-to-20-something children — all live in the same house in California. They’re so close that, ordinarily, their idea of fun is to all pile onto Mom and Dad’s bed to watch “The Bachelor.”

But in late January, Diana, a 56-year-old math teacher, learned she had a rare, aggressive form of endometrial cancer and a 50 percent chance of survival. Her husband and children have been told to keep their distance, because chemotherapy has left her vulnerable to infection. The family is especially jittery because one daughter recently returned from Italy after her study abroad program skidded to a halt. Another is a U.S. Marine who spends weekdays on a base where others have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Meagan Wilkerson has become the enforcer, telling her mother to separate herself. Mrs. Wilkinson feels hurt. Meagan feels guilty.

So the Wilkinsons are living a more acute version of our collective dilemma: longing for connections they once took for granted, terrified of making mistakes and unsure how to get through the coming months.

“I break the rules sometimes,” Mrs. Wilkinson confessed, choking back tears. “‘Just put on some clean clothes and lie down next to me,’” she said she tells her children when she can no longer bear being several feet away.

To seek help for the Wilkinsons, and the rest of us, I turned to authorities on how to cope with social distancing: therapists who advise cancer patients and their families, including during treatments like stem-cell transplants, which can involve prolonged isolation and other measures to guard against infection.

Ian Sadler, a psychologist at Columbia University Medical Center, gently dismissed Meagan Wilkinson’s fear that she would damage her mother by not hugging her. Distancing can be an act of care, he said. A lack of embrace is now an embrace.

Allison Applebaum, a psychologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, worried about the burden on the Wilkinson children. Maintaining complete distance and cleanliness, monitoring contact and food, is “an enormous source of anxiety,” she said, for them and now everyone else. “You can’t do it perfectly a hundred percent of the time.” Note to everyone who is wiping, washing and Clorox-ing these days: in some cancer caregivers, the responsibility of constantly trying to eliminate germs contributes to post-traumatic stress symptoms, she said.

To find a substitute for cuddling, Dr. Applebaum suggested an exercise she does with her patients. If a father longs to play ball outside with his son, she asks him: “What was it about playing ball in the backyard that was meaningful? Was it about the ball, or was it connecting with him?” The goal is to find an alternate activity that delivers similar satisfaction.

Grace Ashford contributed research.

The Times’s new Dilemmas column offers guidance on how to navigate daily life during the coronavirus. Whether or not the virus has reached your neighborhood, what’s swept into everyone’s lives is a set of confounding dilemmas. So send yours to [email protected]. There’s a saying in journalism: The solution is always more reporting. And that’s what we’ll do here.