An elderly couple — she’s 88 and he’s 90 — are back home from a hospital stay Friday — coronavirus free after being prescribed by their celebrity psychiatrist son an unproven treatment touted by President Donald Trump.
It was Sunday, March 29, when EMTs wrapped Dolores Amen in a yellow tarp and whisked her off to Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach. The EMTs did not allow her suitcase in the ambulance. She had pneumonia and a positive test for COVID-19.
A second ambulance came for her husband. Louis Amen also had pneumonia and a fever. He made it to the curb with the help of a walker. A second set of EMTs wrapped him in a yellow tarp and took him to Hoag. He, too, had tested positive for COVID-19.
When the Amens arrived, Dr. Philip Robinson, Hoag’s Medical Director of Infection Prevention, hustled out of the Incident Command Center, a boardroom set up to handle oversight of COVID-19 patients. the Orange Conty Register reported. When he met the Amens in the emergency room, he didn’t tell them what he was really thinking.
“I was petrified,” Robinson told the Register. “The older you get, the more complications there are.”
The Centers for Disease Control released a morbidity study in March that said between 10 and 27 percent of COVID-positive people older than 85 will die. The rate is less than 1 percent for people under the age of 64.
Seeing the Amens, who have seven children, and 50 grand, great-grand and great-great-grandchildren, bothered him so much, “I didn’t sleep for a couple of days,” Robinson said. But something strange happened on the way to the Amens’ obituaries.
Fewer than five days later, the Amens were discharged from Hoag, weakened, but COVID-free. Louis, who owns eight supermarkets in Los Angeles, is currently working from home in Newport Beach, and Dolores is dreaming about the day she can get back out on the golf course, the Register reported.
“Thank God,” Dolores said. “It’s a miracle.”
“This was one of those heart-warming stories,” Robinson said. “It gave a little bit of energy to our staff. It gave everyone a great feeling.”
The Amens used an unproven treatment that has been touted by Trump. It was prescribed first by their son, Daniel. Hoag’s Dr. Robinson, who continued to administer the prescription, said if he had the choice to do it again, he wouldn’t because there is no way to know if the treatment had any effect on the Amens.
Dr. Daniel Amen wrote out two prescriptions for two drugs: hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. His parents started taking the drugs before the ambulances came. They continued their doses while in Hoag Hospital. They received no other medicine.
On March 19, Trump announced he had authorized the use of hydroxychloroquine, which had once been used to fight malaria, as a treatment for coronavirus. The announcement was met with backlash from medical professionals who said the drug had not gone through the clinical trial process.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, called any success stories with the drug “anecdotal.”
After the Amens discharged from Hoag on April 2, Mary Amen said, “Hydroxychloroquine saved my family.”
Robinson said the only reason he allowed the Amens to keep taking the drug they had started at home was because hydroxychloroquine was listed among the hospital guidelines for treatment during the pandemic. Since then, the guidelines have been changed. The drug is no longer on the list.