A 99-year-old lady beat COVID-19 after surviving an assassination attempt, a plane crash, and breast cancer.
Joy Andrew, 99, is an inspirational lady with dementia who cheated death multiple times. In her latest success story, the elderly woman “miraculously” beat coronavirus after her daughter had already said her farewell.
As 57-year-old daughter Michele Andrew explained, she visited her mum at Minster Grange, a nursing home in York, UK, after she was placed in hospice care due to complications from COVID-19.
In spite of all the odds, however, Joy continued to fight the killer bug for months.
“My mum has always been a very feisty woman. She takes things in her stride, like a lot of people from her generation who lived through the war tend to do,” Michele explained.
“She carries those characteristics with her to this day and I think it is those which saw her through the last few months. She certainly wasn’t going to let coronavirus defeat her.”
According to the family, Joy was born and raised in the 1920s and joined the Second World War by becoming a sergeant in Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.
Following the war and attempted assassination by a Nazi driver, Joy became an air hostess for the British Overseas Airways Corporation, a role that allowed her to travel the world.
“One day the pilot made a dreadful mistake and flew off course, running out of fuel. The plane, a comet, crashed in Libya and broke upon impact,” Michele explained.
“The crew survived but one passenger died. They were all stranded in the desert and rescued by Bedouins – a nomadic Arab of the desert.”
Following the harrowing plane crash, Joy got married and adopted Michele. As she reached her 50s, Joy defeated breast cancer and became a housewife.
After her husband died in 2013, Joy transferred to a nursing home where she has been staying and defying the odds as she did throughout her life despite suffering from dementia.
Speaking of her mother’s victory against COVID-19, Michele said:
“She wasn’t speaking, eating or drinking. Her oxygen levels were fluctuating wildly. I went in to bid my mother a final farewell.
“This was not the first death-bed speech I’d been called in to make, but I was sure it would be the last. For the next two days her life hung in the balance as she was nursed by a team.”
After everything that she’d been through, however, Joy “wasn’t going to let coronavirus defeat her” and her family are looking forward to celebrating her 100th birthday later this year.
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Replaced!