THE ROAD HOME

Now, they and other exhausted heroes of the pandemic are ready to return to their regular, hardworking lives.

Ewelina and Michelle McDade are one of the first married couples in Connecticut to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. They embody what this breakthrough means for their profession.

The crush of media cameras still swelled inside a tent on the grounds of Hartford Hospital on Dec. 14, when Ewelina McDade sat for one of the first COVID-19 vaccinations in Connecticut, and the nation. Just a few minutes earlier the governor, the CEO of the Hartford HealthCare hospital chain and a lineup of medical people had offered soaring words about what the vaccine meant, nine months after coronavirus shut the nation down. McDade, manager of nursing education at the Hartford HealthCare hospitals in New Britain, Southington and Meriden, didn’t need a pep talk on the vaccine’s safety and its role in ending the mayhem. She had done the research and she lived the crisis alongside her colleagues — often, in 2020, on the medical floors with sick patients. Three months before, she had married Dr. Michelle McDade, associate chief of emergency medicine at Hospital of Central Connecticut in New Britain, in a rooftop ceremony in Washington, D.C. And Michelle was there on that wet pre-Christmas morning to witness Ewelina making history. Three days later, when Michelle McDade took the vaccine, they became almost certainly Connecticut’s first COVID-vaccinated couple. The newlyweds, who live in Farmington with their four children under age 12 (two from each parent) quickly emerged as spokeswomen for the vaccine, combining science with experience on the front lines. It’s not just happenstance or symbolism that they went first. Intensely if not uniquely, the McDades embody the vaccine and what it means for their profession of exhausted heroes ready to return to regular, hardworking lives that are stressful enough without a pandemic.

See Couple on C10

Contributed photos Above, Dr. Michelle McDade, left, and Ewelina McDade, who both work for Hartford HealthCare, were the first married couple to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in Connecticut. Michelle, shown getting a shot in her right arm, is associate chief of emergency medicine at Hospital of Central Connecticut. Ewelina, being inoculated in her left arm on Dec. 14, is manager of nursing education at the Hospital of Central Connecticut in New Britain, Bradley Memorial in Southington and Mid-State Medical Center in Meriden, and a former ER nurse.