New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
101-year-old woman beats her 2nd pandemic
EAST HAVEN — Pauline Romano, 101, just did something that almost no one else on Earth has done.
She survived both the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1919 and the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Two pandemics, more than a century apart — and Romano, described by staff at the Whispering Pines Rehabilitation & Nursing Center, where she spent most of the spring, as “very independent,” just kicked COVID’s butt.
Oh yes, she did!
Romano, who just celebrated her 101st birthday May 9, was diagnosed with COVID-19 after she started running a fever in April at Whispering Pines on Tallmadge Avenue.
But despite the fever, she remained mostly asymptomatic. She lived to celebrate another birthday — and then returned to her own home in East Haven, Whispering Pines said in a post on its Facebook page.
“I am so happy to be alive,” Romano, a former insurance administrative worker, mother of two and grandmother of six, told staff at Whispering Pines, which has had several dozen COVID-19 diagnoses and at least 25 COVID fatalities since the pandemic began.
Romano’s caregivers at Whispering Pines, which like many nursing homes has worked hard to protect
residents even as COVID-19 tore through the place, described her as “very independent,” according to the Facebook post.
“I couldn’t have asked for a better experience. I’m sad because I’ll miss everyone at Whispering Pines,” Romano said in the post. “But I get to go home now.”
Throughout the time that she was sick, “All I had on my mind is that I wanted to go home.”
Romano was born on May 9, 1919 — right at the tail end of the worldwide Spanish Flu pandemic, which disproportionately killed both the very young and the very old, as well as young adults, infecting 500 million people; about a third of the world’s population at the time.
Her life has been full of other trials. She lived through the Great Depression and World War II, among others, and in later years survived a number of health issues, said her son, Paul Romano, who grew up in East Haven and now lives outside of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.
Romano and his sister, Patricia Esposito of East Haven, with whom Pauline Romano lives, are thrilled to see their mother, who entered Whispering Pines for rehab after a fall, kick COVID-19 and go home.
“My mother is an inspiration to me and always has been, because of all the pain she’s gone through because of her medical history,” said Paul Romano. “She’s also very smart. She’s always with it, so to speak.”
From the start, when he heard his mother had the virus, “I said, ‘My mother is not going to let some little virus that’s named after a beer beat her — and she didn’t,’” he said.
While he worried at the very beginning that “this is the beginning of the end,” Romano said, “I’m not surprised” to see his mother bounce back. “Nothing surprises me anymore about my mother’s health.”
Esposito said her mother, who has difficulty hearing and was unable to come to the phone, was glad to be home — and she was glad to have her mother home.
What does Pauline Romano do now that she’s home?
“She sleeps a lot ,” Esposito said. “She’s 101.”
It had been a difficult few months since Romano entered Whispering Pines, “Then the nursing home was on lockdown from the middle of March until she came home last week.”
Esposito said “it was kind of devastating” when she first found out her mother was COVID-positive “because I can’t see her, I can’t talk to her. Explaining it to her on the phone was kind of hard.”
But “I talked to her a couple of times a day on the phone,” as best she could.
Asked if she ever worried that her mother might die, Esposito said, “Of course! I thought at her age that if she got the symptoms, that would be it. But it wasn’t God’s plan.”
Now, “I’m happy to have her home,” she said. “I’ll tell you, for 101, she’s seen a lot . ... If she could hear better she’d be telling you all about the things she has seen in her life.”
According to Whispering Pines, “The hardworking caregivers at Whispering Pines have worked round the clock with her, as with the other residents, giving her the best chance possible to recover, and ultimately securing her timely release back to her own home.”
Terrence Brennan, Whispering Pines’ administrator, said in the post, “At Whispering Pines, we believe in quality of life through quality of care. Our dedicated staff provide 24 hour a day exceptional care for our vulnerable residents, and naturally they grow close to them.
“Pauline is no exception, and staff will miss her great sense of humor and she always has a smile for everyone,” Brennan said. “We are always happy to see our residents rehabilitated back to good health, and able to return to their own homes.”
Brennan said that “caring as it does for the most vulnerable in the community, Whispering Pines was an early victim of the coronavirus at a time when the state, the country and the world were struggling with the pandemic, and when guidance from experts was reactive and quickly changing.
“It was not alone in suffering losses — it was just one of a number of other nursing homes across the state to have done so,” he said. “But despite this difficult time, Whispering Pines continues to provide quality of life through quality of care, and Ms Romano’s amazing success story is an example of the rehabilitation and nursing success stories for which our dedicated and caring staff are proud to be responsible every day.”