73-year-old woman survives coronavirus after 51 days in intensive care
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Jim Eaton held his wife’s hand Saturday afternoon for the first time in 51 days — the longest period the Louisville couple has been separated in more than five decades of marriage.
When Paula Eaton was wheeled on a gurney out of Baptist Hospital East, more than a dozen nurses created a tunnel to clap and cheer for her as the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” played in the background.
Paula holds the record for the hospital’s longest amount of time a COVID-19 patient has spent in the Intensive Care Unit before being discharged.
When she was admitted to Baptist East Hospital on March 27, there were only 11 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Kentucky. She was within the first 20 reported cases of the coronavirus in the state.
After 51 days, several rounds of pneumonia, a blood infection, and weeks on a ventilator and tracheal