The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
108-year-old Hamden woman beats COVID-19
HAMDEN — Anita Murphy might be the longest-living survivor of COVID-19 to date.
She celebrated her 108th birthday in February and then in late April tested positive for the viMarge rus. Despite the odds, she overcame COVID-19 after about a month.
Murphy lives at Whitney Rehabilitation Care Center in Hamden, which, like all elder care facilities, closed to visitors completely in early March.
Nicolia, director of nursing, said Murphy was one of the first cases of coronavirus they had at the center, and from there it spread rapidly.
“It was horrifying,” she said. “We were doing well for a while. Then come April 10, we had our first case of COVID and from that point on, it was like throwing a match on dry grass — it just blew up.”
Nicolia said they watched as staff caught the virus and those who didn’t were working double duty.
“It was just awful,” she said. “We lost 20 residents, and it was so sad because family couldn’t be with them.”
Murphy usually drinks water all day long and loves her sweets, her nurse Jenn Coratelli
said, but when Murphy was battling COVID-19 she hardly ate or drank anything, and while she’s usually talkative, she barely spoke.
“It was about a month where she wasn’t Anita, trying to get her to take sips of liquid,” Nicolia said.
Given Murphy’s age, Nicolia said she was worried about her surviving.
“We’d just had a birthday for her and at that time she was in pretty great shape,” she said. “Given her age, I’m looking at residents much younger than her and not surviving. I thought she wouldn’t pull through.”
Murphy has one son, two grandsons, seven great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild. One of her grandsons, Brian Diglio, lives in Cheshire and visited her frequently before the pandemic.
“It’s just difficult that you can’t be there and I’m sure everyone’s going through that on different levels,” Diglio said. “She’s had a good life and is very grateful. Whenever you’d see her or talk to her, she’d say how she was being treated well and being taken care of.”
Diglio said despite the added risk that coronavirus carries for elderly people, when he got the call from Whitney Rehabilitation about his grandmother’s test, he said he knew somehow she would be fine.
Coratelli works with Murphy every day during the week, and while Murphy was battling COVID-19, Coratelli was there encouraging her to eat or take small sips of water to stay hydrated.
Murphy was never on a ventilator since the center was able to manager her illness using oxygen and IVs. During that time she wasn’t eating or drinking and just staying in bed, Nicolia said.
At the height of the pandemic, “it was like walking through a war every day,” she said.
“It angered me a lot,” Coratelli said, recalling Murphy’s battle with COVID-19. “To be here every day for these people, specifically with Anita, you become attached to your residents for different reasons, so to see her that way, it
makes me cry. It is an awful thing. Nobody knew how to deal with this. It’s so new for everybody. You have to go through it to really know what it’s like.”
She said the pandemic conditions took a toll on everybody, and for the residents, all they have had are the staff every day since it wasn’t until recently that any visitors were allowed.
Nicolia said when she heard Murphy chatting again in the distance, she knew Murphy had turned a corner and was on the mend.
Coratelli said some of the residents who died from the virus were much younger than Murphy, “so to see her is amazing.”
“She (Murphy) brought herself out of it,” she said.
After Murphy recovered, Coratelli asked her how she fought the virus and how she lived so long. Murphy replied: “‘You have to keep dancing.’”
“Hopefully it will give some people hope that even though you hear about all these cases not ending well, there are cases that do end well in the older generation,” Diglio said.
At 108, Murphy has survived a pandemic before — the 1918 flu pandemic that lasted until 1920, infecting about
a third of the world’s population at the time.
“She’s been through pandemics, world wars, Depression — that gives you a little bit of a different outlook,” Diglio said.
Diglio said his grandmother never drove, and she insists that walking is one of the reasons for her long life — that, and dancing.
Murphy is one of seven children and has lived in Hamden all her life, marrying in 1934, the year of the Central American hurricane that became one of the deadliest in history.
She and her husband were active members of the Elks Club in town and while she primarily was homemaker, she worked for a time at the Union Trust on the corner of Putnam and Dixwell avenues, as well as at the Talon Zipper Co.
“Being grateful, and her outlook on things, you could tell that made a difference in life for her,” Diglio said. He said his grandmother’s toughness and how she never complains got her through her battle with COVID-19.
“I thought it was amazing,” Nicolia said. “To be 108 years old and to come through this pandemic the way she did, she needs to be celebrated.”