Another great COVID survival story
[Hat tip: commenter “AesopFan”]
Rose Leigh-Manuell calls herself blessed.
The vibrant great-great-grandmother is 101 years old.
Her medical staff at Good Samaritan/Catholic Health Services in Sayville believes Leigh-Manuell’s strength and drive battled and beat the coronavirus. But she credits them.
“The doctors and nurses, everybody taking wonderful care of me,” she said.
Not only did Leigh-Manuell conquer COVID-19, she survived the Spanish flu the year she was born.
“1918. December 31st, 1918,” she said…
So was there a secret to her recovery?
“She loves any junk food. But her Oreo cookies, primarily vanilla or golden Oreos, are her favorite,” said her son.
Please read the whole thing.
I think the real secret was the Oreos
I’m serious. My mother lived to almost 100, and for most of her life she ate Oreos with great regularity and equal gusto. In her case, it was the chocolate ones. When she was almost 90 she was forced to give them up (that is, I forced her to give them up) because she developed migraines in reaction to chocolate. She was plenty mad, too, and used to sneak them for a while. But she’d been having migraines every day and they stopped on a dime when she stopped eating chocolate (mainly those Oreos), and so there really was no choice.
I used to tell her she was lucky – she had to stop eating chocolate at around 89, but I had to stop eating chocolate in my 40s because of migraines. She wasn’t particularly sympathetic with that argument.
[NOTE: My mother was a youngster during the 1918 flu pandemic, but she never spoke about it.]
I don’t eat Oreos, because that’s too much sugar, but I do eat, many days, one square of Ghirardelli 85% Midnight Reverie chocolate. One square only is almost carb-free. So far, it doesn’t give me migraines.
Ooh, me being a chocolate addict, I have questions.
1) For those who get migraines from the material, does it matter if it’s from milk or dark chocolate? I generally only eat dark – not super-dark bitter, though I did go through a package of as high as 72% recently – as milk hasn’t really agreed with me for some years.
2) This business about Oreos: in my youth – through high school, I think – I was a reasonably consistent Oreo-eater. How time- and dose-limited are the beneficial effects? Should I resume?
Philip, you should join a clinical study. Just be sure you get into the group that gets real Oreos and not placebos.
Neo,
The grandmother of one of my dearest friends in our little town here in Pennsylvania is another Spanish flu survivor. She’s 104, lives in a nursing home, shook off a broken hip a couple years ago, and is still going strong. The Chinese flu has affected a handful of residents and some staff in this nursing home, but all have thus far survived.
I have a good friend, another surgeon, who is a fitness nut. He is around ten years older than I am, which makes him about 92. He has worn out many of his joints working out. He called me the other day. He was fishing in New Zealand in January. He does that a lot. He fishes the Kola Peninsula for Atlantic salmon, etc.
Anyway, he flew home on February 4. He said the international airport was full of “Asians in masks.” Anyway, he got home and about a week later developed a bad cold. He wound up going to the Newport Beach hospital ER, but did not require admission. He now thinks he probably had the virus and plans to have an antibody test next week. We talked about the football season. He is a big football fan and played baseball for Stanford years ago.
A fascinating idea, Kate! An Oreo placebo would have to be made very cleverly to taste similar but not contain the actual magic. It’d probably be like cardboard.
But if I go for the study, how are they going to control for previous exposure? Issues of desensitization, etc. could complicate interpretation of the data….
That’s a great story.
This article has an interesting list: https://interestingengineering.com/17-of-the-oldest-people-in-the-world-to-have-beaten-covid-19
“Italica Grondona, a 102-year-old Italian woman, survived the coronavirus after being admitted to hospital in early March with heart failure. Since then, she has made a full recovery, leading her doctors to nickname her “‘Highlander’-the immortal.” Impressively, Grondona’s doctors believe she was also infected with the Spanish flu at a young age in 1918 — making her one of the very few patients worldwide to have survived being infected during these two epidemics. … At the time of writing, Italian grandmother Ada Zanusso is the oldest known person to have recovered from the coronavirus. Much like the previously mentioned Italica Grondons, Zanusso is also one of the very few people to have been infected both by the Spanish flu — which infected approximately one-third of the world’s population and killed roughly 50 million people in 1918 — and COVID-19 in her lifetime.”
The lemon Oreos should be listed as an addictive substance.
“…making her one of the very few patients worldwide to have survived being infected during these two epidemics….Zanusso is also one of the very few people to have been infected both by the Spanish flu” – rcat
I wonder if there is some kind of cross-immunization effect that doesn’t keep you from getting infected, but vitiates some of the effects???
However, we probably won’t ever know how many survivors of the Spanish flu fell to the Chinese one.
It occurred to me yesterday while I was working on the roof ( things often occur to me while I am working) that what we have experienced in the United States is like Breast Cancer Awareness month on ( estrogen) steroids. Let me explain. Every year at the start of football season, everybody is pressured to wear pink. The NFL football players wear pink. It’s like breast cancer is supposed to be the only disease that month we are allowed to think of. Don’t get me wrong, I feel bad for anybody that gets breast cancer. But there is something manipulative about that month. The older I get, the more annoyed I get about that month. People die of all manner of diseases during breast cancer awareness month. It is not the only disease in town. But, Woe to anyone that tries to point that out! As others have similarly asked, Rush Limbaugh among them , do women’s sports teams wear some symbol for testicular cancer for a whole month? Do the pink people wear a thing for kidney disease for an entire month? There are twelve months in the Western Calendar. Thirteen in the old Jewish calendar in some years – got to get the leap month in to keep the seasons in line. There are a lot more than twelve or thirteen diseases that kill people. While this COVID thing has been going, people who need to go the hospital for heart problems and joint surgery and cancer, and dare I point it out, breast cancer, have been discouraged and in some cases denied their treatment, because it has been COVID-19 month. And now , because of that, there are ironically more hospitals facing bankruptcy because they were not treating virus patients. So we have been stuck in COVID -19 month for way too long. I wonder what color we were supposed to wear ? My dad, by the way, died at home on Resurrection day, aka “Easter” from heart complications. His literal last words were, “I don’t want to go to the hospital.” The previous time he was in there overnight , they would not let his wife of 54 years stay with him because of the virus rules. So Sunday night around 10:30 I am trying unsuccessfully and regrettably, poorly to do CPR on my dad. Thanks a lot COVID19 month.
Slightly off topic, but not much.
Here in Lombardy there are two important hospitals which are doing very, very promising tests using blood plasma: all the patients they cured this way recovered, so far. If you are interested, here is an article:
https://lanuovabq.it/it/a-pavia-la-cura-che-funziona-e-sfida-silenzio-e-interessi-cosi-il-plasma-uccide-il-virus
It’s in Italian, but it should be easily understandable with normal Google-translation. If you have doubts, I can help (today, May 1st,is Workers’ holiday here: I have time).
The two hospitals, one in Mantova and the other in Pavia, are renowned – especially that in Pavia, which is also a University campus and where people from all Europe go to be cured from cancer (my son was saved there, as I already said elsewhere).
If you read the article, you will see that the USA government is already in contact with the Pavia hospital; it also seems that there are attempts to hide this news because the cure is very cheap (it’s based on plasma donation from people who autonomously recovered, developing anticorps) and economical interest involving big pharma might be at play.
A great story. Some time ago Neo in one of your posts you stated that there seem to be certain people that are impervious to the common effects of aging. This amazing lady, who drove a car until 99 years old is one of those. And the man that Mike K mentions in his comment. Remarkable.
jon baker,
I’m very sorry for your family’s loss. I’ve heard far too many stories like that. And seen a couple myself . We’ll say a prayer for your father and your family.
Paolo, an internet search indicates that plasma trials are getting started here as well. Your Italian hospitals are, I think, not burdened by anything like our FDA, which makes everything more difficult and time-consuming.
jon baker, so sorry to hear of your loss. Many doctors are reporting what you do — people who need to go to the hospital, or to the doctor’s office, aren’t going.
In its ruling — the first major decision as it examines the constitutionality of Whitmer’s order — the Michigan Court of Claims sided with the governor. But in his opinion, Judge Christopher Murray acknowledged that rights claimed by the plaintiffs were fundamental, FOX 2 reported.
“But those liberty interests are, and always have been, subject to society’s interests – society being our fellow residents,” the judge wrote. “They – our fellow residents – have an interest to remain unharmed by a highly communicable and deadly virus, and since the state entered the Union in 1837, it has had the broad power to act for the public health of the entire state when faced with a public crisis.”
Issuing an injunction against Whitmer’s order “would not serve the public interest, despite the temporary harm to plaintiffs’ constitutional rights,” the judge added.
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Serving the public interest can now end your constitutional rights…
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Jon Baker:
Praying for you and your family.
jon baker
I am so sorry to hear of your dads passing and your personal experience of added pain…
I still miss my father very much and to hear things pains me each time anew… 🙁
I know this wont make you feel better, but i was an EMT when i was young, and we learned CPR.. CPR in the movies works a lot more than it does in real life. In real life its success rate is actually very low, and you should not feel guilty that it did not work in your case. This was what we were taught because we would be doing it more than once and would experience the outcome and they did not want us to have issues over it.
jon baker: While this COVID thing has been going, people who need to go the hospital for heart problems and joint surgery and cancer, and dare I point it out, breast cancer, have been discouraged and in some cases denied their treatment……….
but on your point… your correct.. i tried to point out that the cure was worse that the disease… but was shut down on it… cuomo shut down a reporter by telling them people should work in essential businesses if they want to work… (let em eat cake)…
this is why i posted (before reading your post, so please dont think i was insensitive), about the public need being able to override the bill of rights as now denoted in Michigan…
the breast cancer month and all those things were long term normalization’s of this public pronouncement is good to have collective focus… and what your talking about is what you lose with that focus… (note that Adele the singer divorce has brought out the truth as to feminists who are upset she is being treated equally by the court and having to pay her husband a bundle… ie. it was never about equality, it was always about superiority… and now they have it, in business, they are going to lose it in marriage if they decide to marry… )
the loss with focus is that the other things not deemed by the state lose out to the frenzy of good feelings over a collective focus on one thing, vs an individual focus on the many things… (but this drives money to that cause which is used to fund feminism, not just breast cancer – ergo my Adele comment)
well… now that the public good is ok to break the inalienable rights of the constitution and bill of rights, we should be reminded:
that Russian gulags were a public good
that in the 1930s, loading Jews into ovens were a declared public good
that re-education camps in china are a public good
that selling organs you remove from live people without anesthetic are a public good
that disfranchising poor pale males as a way to punish wealthy pale males who are not losing their lives and committing suicide is a public good
this list can be quite long…
and quite bad… as the public good has a long history of being used for such heinous acts… after all, wasn’t the intifada a public good?
Watch it before they censor it…
BREAKING: Funeral Directors in COVID-19 Epicenter Doubt Legitimacy of Deaths Attributed to Pandemic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=g5f_6ltv7oI&feature=emb_logo
Kate, I confess my ignorance about the mandated procedure in Italy.
Knowing my country’s bureaucracy, I suspect it isn’t better than in the US, but I can be wrong.
Here what’s certainly missing is proper funding for scientific research; hospitals are mainly public and healthcare is socialized, with all the pros and cons, the fights and scandals you can imagine; but I have great consideration for the physicists and the researchers.
jon baker, I’m so very sorry about your loss of your father, and the way you lost him.
It won’t be any comfort, and I don’t mean it to, but I am feeling the irony that precisely the opposite happened to my father: he died in the hospital, long before this virus season, when he so very desperately wanted to be at home. There were reasons, good reasons, that we couldn’t get him home, but all these years later it still rakes furrows through my heart that he had to die in that place where he did not want to be and that I didn’t somehow prevent it. I am afraid that no matter how we lose our dads, it will never, never, never feel right. And again, I am so sorry.
Thank you everybody for the comments , thoughts and prayers.
God bless you and your family Jon Baker.
So your mother died a slow and horrible death from chocolate deprivation!
How dare you do that to a poor old woman!