BROCKTON, Mass. – Like his father before him, Francis Cashin can now be himself a pandemic survivor.
At 94, surviving was a feat for Cashin, who contracted coronavirus while in palliative care at an assisted living facility in Longwood, Florida. But despite pessimistic clients and several cases of imminent death before, Cashin has managed, Francis Cashin’s son Mike Cashin said.
Cashin’s survival in a global pandemic that, according to Johns Hopkins University, has so far killed more than 181,000 people in the United States, comes a century after his father, John Cashin, faced his own pandemic. John Cashin was in his 30s and was living in Brockton when the influenza pandemic hit in 1918, which cost his first wife and three children his life.
“What are the odds?” Mike Cashin says.
But John Cashin survived, then reunited his wife, Nina, and the couple had three children, Francis.
Francis Cashin was born in Brockton in 1926 and grew up on North Montello Street, where he was known in the city as “Fran” or “Franny,” his son said. After graduating from Brockton High School, Francis Cashin joined the Navy, serving for two years towards the end of World War II. Then he went to school in Miami at the G.I. Bill and joined the FBI after graduating, where he worked basically in New York and Washington, D.C.
And although Francis Cashin no longer lived in Brockton, he returned to make a stopover at his circle of relatives at home, where Mike Cashin said his circle of relatives would spend a lot of time in the Ash Street playground.
“It was her house, so we spent time visiting her,” Mike Cashin said. «… He’s been away a long time, but he’s here. It was a Brocktoninan. “
And it was at Brockton that he developed a determined attitude that led him to his life, Cashin said.
“He’s a very willing person,” Cashin said. “I have never lived in Brockton. I was born in New York and grew up in Washington, D.C., but I’ve linked Brockton to that attitude.
Francis Cashin did the poive test for the coronavirus around July 29, after 3 of his caregivers, who were by his side for about 12 hours a day, had already tested poive, Cashin said.
While his father never had to pass a ventilator, as patients had to do when his condition dropped, Francis Cashin’s oxygen levels were low and had harmful blood pressure, his son said.
“He slept for a few days and was very, very weak,” Mike Cashin said. “I had very, very little energy.”
She looked dark, Cashin said, especially at various events in the afterlife when her circle of relatives thinks of Francis Cashin in his last legs after years of palliative care, two strokes and having read him his last rites at least twice before. They tried calling a nearby church to give it the last additional rites, but did not move to the facility due to the virus threat, Cashin said.
But despite the obstacles, Francis Cashin, as before, controlled to get away with it.
“I think he knows a little bit where he closed (to rest) and took oxygen from himself and breathed the air in the room and his attitude even changed,” Cashin said. “I almost had an attitude of “Come to Jesus,” a new spark of life in him.
He added: “I mean, last week we laughed. He has a serious dementia, but he asked me if I could borrow my car because I wanted to get out of there.”
Upon visiting before the pandemic, the number of visitors was limited, Mike Cashin said one of his rituals was to bring his father a chocolate milkshake.
“When he’s healthy, when eggs are allowed, I never show up without a smoothie when I do,” he said. “Life is beautiful. He lives on smoothies, chocolate and cookies.”
At the time, when Francis Cashin ran as an FBI agent, he had very strict weight limitations and forced him to adopt a healthier diet, Cashin said. But in his later years, his father took care of himself.
“We find it funny that everything you eat now is smoothies and chocolate bars,” he says. “It’s not the institution’s fault. They retreat to give you smart food, but it turns out you just need to eat chocolate bars and smoothies. He lived a life with nothing, now he catches up in old age.”
And when his candy tooth came back after testing positive for COVID-19, they knew it was okay, Cashin said.
“You’ve had a rough few days when Array … we were very, very concerned, and once we knew he had started drinking his smoothies and eating chocolate bars, we knew he was on the road to recovery, so we’re very pleased he’s recovered,” he said. “And we’re not surprised.”
And on August 4, about a week after he first tested positive for coronavirus, Francis Cashin celebrated his 94th birthday.
“He’s been through this busy life and a lot of other families are suffering,” Cashin said. “These other people are dying in combination, and for that to happen, I sense it occurs to thousands of other people, I just hoped it wouldn’t happen to him. That’s not the case, so I hope we can succeed on this stage and resume our overall routine. »
Follow Corlyn Voorhees on Twitter: @corlyn_ENT.