Bay Breeze couple celebrates 86 years of life, another Christmas together
BY BRADLEY “B.J.” DAVIS, JR. Gulf Breeze News bjdavis@gulfbreezenews.com

B.J. Davis/Gulf Breeze News Adah and Mac McIntire will spend Christmas with family and each other.

Warren “Mac” and Adah McIntire, both 86, are planning to spend the holidays with family this year, a tradition that was almost cut short after Adah’s life-threatening illness a year ago.

The couple, originally from Ohio, celebrated birthdays this past October 10 and 11 with friends at Bay Breeze Nursing and Retirement Center. Mac is quick to point out his wife of 32 years is only a half a day older than he is. She thinks the reason of the couple’s longevity is in the stars.

“We were both born in October, so we’re both Libras,” jokes Adah. “He’s very quiet and easy to get along with, and so am I.”

Well-wishers of the couple streamed by the McIntire’s table during their birthday celebration, congratulating them on their milestone, one they didn’t think they’d celebrate just a year before.

A year-and-a-half ago, Adah suffered a stroke, which led to a severe form of aspiration pneumonia which forced her to be fed by a tube bypassing her lungs. She came close to death several times, diminishing the hope of any type of recovery. However, Adah is strong, according to her husband, and never gave up.

“She is a fighter. I told our friends about her condition and they said, ‘she’s a fighter, she’ll pull through,’” said Mac.

The fighting didn’t stop there.

During the course of her treatment, doctors didn’t provide much hope regarding Adah’s ability to eat and drink on her own as a result of weak and deteriorating throat muscles from lack of use. At about the same time, Mac had a fall, prompting a family’s request for the couple to relocate.

“Our daughter is here and our grandsons are here. They all wanted us to come down,” said Mac. Adah, the matriarch of the family of two daughters, two grandsons and three greatgrandsons, was flown via med flight to Gulf Breeze.

The relocation wasn’t the first time they had set foot on Florida soil.

“We normally came here around January, February and March,” said Mac. He said he and Adah were typical snowbirds that enjoyed the Gulf Coast for years before moving to the area. “We had always talked about moving here. We used to go down to Naples, but we liked it here better,” he said.

Once the couple relocated, Adah spent her time in the nursing side of Bay Breeze trying to recover from the stroke as well as fighting off the pneumonia while Mac was in the assisted living portion of the facility. During her treatment, physical therapy was recommended to regain the use of her throat. She was delighted because doctors in

Ohio said therapy wasn’t an option, and she and Mac assumed she’d be relying on a feeding tube for the rest of her life.

“They told me she would never eat again, never walk again. She can do both,” said Mac.

During her several months of therapy, with Mac coming to visit every single day, Adah was administered a Modified Barium Swallow Study to evaluate her ability to swallow on her own. After therapy, she passed the test and graduated to a diet of more manageable foods.

“Basically she went from [eating] nothing to [eating] regular food that’s soft,” said Bay Breeze physical therapist Angela McFarland. The McIntires contribute Adah’s recovery solely to McFarland.

“Angela was wonderful. I have to give the people here credit and Angela credit for saving her life,” said Mac. Angela

quips that she was just doing her job, but recognizes she was an active part in the couple’s goal to reunite the Adah and Mac in the assisted living portion of Bay Breeze. Now the two are in rooms side by side.

“I just loved working with both of them. They are so very loving towards each other. The goal was to get her better so she could live with him. That was the whole point: to keep them together,” said McFarland.

The McIntires will have the opportunity to spend another Christmas together, although Adah doesn’t have to cook, which is something she’s still getting used to.

“I loved to do it,” she said.

Looking back on the trials and tribulations of treatment and therapy, she had one thing in her mind that kept her fighting: Mac.

“I couldn’t leave him,” she said.