A tough-as-nails 92-year-old British man with terminal cancer beat the coronavirus — thanks in part to his “headstrong” personality, according to his family.
“Amazingly, he was not ready to go, he is stubborn. He has been back at home and he is on the mend and recovering slowly,” Jim Bannister’s grandson, Dan Bannister, told Surrey Live.
The elderly bloke from Surrey, England, was diagnosed with cancer in December and given roughly a year to live, according to the outlet.
But last month, Dan — who moved in with Bannister after his cancer diagnosis — noticed that his granddad was acting delirious and admitted him to a hospital for testing, despite the nonagenarian insisting he “was fine.”
“With him being isolated due to lockdown, he started to lose a bit of his cognitive function and was going a bit doolally,” said Dan, 37.
Doctors at Frimley Park Hospital soon gave Bannister the crushing news that he had pneumonia, a urinary tract infection and COVID-19 — on top of cancer.
“The problem was, we could not go and see him, so the initial thought was that, with all these things going on, he was not going to make it,” Dan said.
But after nearly two weeks in the hospital, Bannister is miraculously on the mend at home — and now getting up to make his breakfast each morning.
“He is headstrong and very independent; he wants to do things his way,” Dan said. “As a head engineer, he is very methodical, writes things down and does things a certain way.”
Dan now hopes the gutsy geezer’s recovery story inspires other coronavirus patients to fight.
“It can be beaten. I know it’s horrible and there are people with no underlying health conditions who are dying, but there is someone who is in the high-risk category, who is not meant to pull through, and he made it,” he said.
“He pushed through and it can be done.”