87-Year-Old Marine With Multiple Health Conditions Who Survived Coronavirus
By Hank Berrien
‘The Marine Corps Trains Us To Deal With Adversity’
An 87-year-old former Marine who spent two tours in Vietnam and has multiple health conditions survived an epic battle with coronavirus, asserting, “The Marine Corps trains us to deal with adversity; they teach us to adapt, overcome, and continue the mission.” He added another reason for his survival: “And finally, the grace of God. That’s what I have here.”
Franklin Eller told CBS News, “I’m feeling great. And I was really fortunate to find myself laying here at the Mayaguez Medical Center. As you may know, I was evacuated from a ship; we were on a cruise in the Caribbean. And I was feeling pretty lousy about six days into the 14-day cruise. So I kinda let it go, and it kept getting worse and worse and I had trouble breathing and I couldn’t walk very far. So finally on the third day my wife convinced me to go down to the medical center. I checked in there; they saw I was in pretty bad shape, they did all the tests they could do; they didn’t have any of the virus tests …”
Eller said he saw the X-rays taken of his lungs on the cruise ship. He recalled, “Both lungs were practically black, and filled with infection.… I have emphysema; I have heart disease; I have a leaky heart valve in one lung; I have peripheral neuropathy, and I have an irregular heartbeat.”