‘I FEEL FABULOUS’
Vaccinations bring relief, possibilities to older adults
STAMFORD — Two women scuttled down the hallway at Stamford Health’s Wheeler Building, and their excited chatter resonated in the otherwise silent vaccine clinic. A hospital employee guided the pair, Marjory Tait and Mary Frattaroli, to a little room near the end of the corridor before turning around to help another patient.
Like everyone else in the old hospital wing, the two women were set to receive their COVID vaccines, which Stamford Health has been administering since mid-December. Tait and Frattaroli, who said they were “well over 80” and live in Greenwich, qualified for the vaccine under Phase 1b.
Frattaroli entered the room first, along with her adult daughter, and Tait hung by the doorway. A nurse ran through the standard questions that precede inoculation while Frattaroli sat in a chair towards the middle of the room. If she was nervous about the vaccination process, it was undetectable behind her massive sunglasses and surgical mask.
The entire ordeal was over in seconds.
“That was it?” Frattaroli said as soon as it was over, before shimmying out of the room. Seconds later, Andie Jodko, hospital director of communications, handed her a bright blue “I Got My COVID-19 Vaccine” sticker.
She wore it with pride. “I feel fabulous,” said Frattaroli to Tait, along with everyone else standing in the hallway.
“I expected a whole issue, you know? A lot of people and a lot of waiting,” said Frattaroli in her Scottish accent, while Tait moved to get her own vaccine. “You kind of dread it, but it was nothing. Everyone was so amazing.”
Stamford began its own Phase 1b efforts early in January, giving errant vaccines to seniors in the community to ensure that doses didn’t go to waste. After about a week, after Gov. Ned Lamont announced the formal 1b rollout, they shut down their own operation and pooled resources with Stamford Health, in effect creating the city’s first mass vaccination site.
When the hospital was just serving its own employees and healthcare workers from the community, there were only a couple of people giving the vaccine. Now, the hospital has sixteen suites where staff vaccinates community members, plus a waiting room where people are screened for reactions postvaccine.
Prior to Phase 1b, Stamford Health vaccinated about 280 people daily. On Wednesday, however, the site administered 1,000 vaccines. Both Mayor David Martin and Stamford Health CEO Kathleen Silard said that a second vaccine site for the city would come soon.
Penny Weiser, 80, came
“We’ll just feel safe, now that we’re vaccinated.”
Marjory Tait, recently vaccinated Greenwich resident
from Easton to receive her vaccine at Stamford Health. She’d made an appointment that same morning, with the help of her husband Marty. The couple’s doctor directed them to get the COVID vaccine as soon as possible, and they obliged.
They contracted coronavirus back in October, and somehow escaped relatively intact, despite their age. They caught the virus from employees at their auto garage, which Marty Weiser visits often.
The virus knocked out the shop’s staff of six during one weekend, but ultimately infected 13 people through the extended network of spouses and children.
Penny Weiser said her husband was completely asymptomatic, but she wasn’t as lucky.
“The first week I felt completely fine, I was walking around and making soup,” she said. “But the second week I felt like I got hit by a truck.”
She was sick for three weeks, but eventually recovered without having to go to the hospital.
While some research suggests that people who contract the virus can have immunity for up to 8 months, the Weisers didn’t want to leave reinfection to chance.
“Our doctor recommends it,” said Mary, before taking a beat. “Highly recommends it.”
Anne Friday, 63, also received the vaccine at the request of her doctor after being infected with a mild case of the virus in December. Unlike the Weisers, she was being vaccinated under Phase 1-A. Friday, another Greenwich resident, works with residential treatment patients, and her job has no room for working at home.
The nature of her work spared Friday, who lives alone, the loneliness most people experienced during the pandemic, but it also made getting the vaccine imperative.
When everyone is vaccinated, the first thing Friday wants to do is see live music, which felt fitting for a woman wearing leather pants and punk-ish bracelets to a medical appointment. She’d prefer a Grateful Dead cover band, but anything will do.
“Whoever’s playing, honestly! I’ll go to the first show that opens up for general admission,” she said. “That’s my thing! Live music is what I miss the most.”
For Tait and Frattaroli, their post-pandemic plans aren’t too different from the life they already lead during the pandemic. At 4:30 every afternoon, they walk on the beach in Greenwich with their friends.
“We’ll just feel safe, now that we’re vaccinated,” Tait said.
As a collective, they call themselves the Ya-yas.
“Now, we’re just going to go a little earlier,” said Frattaroli.