'She can't keep fighting off that disease': Family furious after 87-year-old tests positive for COVID-19 twice
Even bound to a walker, and no car to get here there, Theresa Brown is determined to get her mother Mary Perkins out of the Trevecca Center for Rehabilitation and Healing.
“If I get made enough, I get to mine. That’s my momma. I’ll run to her,” Brown said.
Brown said this week she learned her 87-year-old mother is once again COVID-19 positive, after being positive for the virus in early June.
“She can’t keep on fighting off that disease. She’s 87. She doesn’t have that much to fight with her immune system,” Brown said.
Brown now joins other children of residents, like Charles Horton, in questioning what’s being done to contain the virus.
With 89 cases, the center has the second highest number of COVID-19 infections in nursing homes in Tennessee.
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Horton told WSMW in May that he’s preparing to sue after his father died from coronavirus.
“I’m not real happy with them naturally and I haven’t had one condolence call,” Horton said.
The TV station earlier exposed internal emails from Metro Public Health Department workers who expressed frustration getting answers themselves, in one case writing, “Trevecca has been tough to reach so it’s been moving slow.”
Brown said she can’t get an answer as to how her mother was re-infected.
A WSMW reporter called the center Friday and was told no administrators were available to answer questions because of the holiday.
Families receive texts from the center that always contain the following statement: “We continue to be diligent with infection control.”
Brown said the center seems to be unaware of the toll this is taking on the people inside and outside the building.
“They don’t understand what we’re going through out here,” Brown said. “That’s the only mother I have.”