BAY CITY, MI - Five healthcare workers made history Thursday afternoon in Bay County as they rolled up their sleeves and got the first COVID-19 vaccinations at McLaren Bay Region.
“I feel special, I feel excited, I feel like this is just one more step in the right direction as to get back to the life as we knew before the pandemic,” said McLaren emergency department registered nurse Marshana Richardson.
Richardson was joined by respiratory therapist Jim Blundell, Dr. Rajesh Dandamudi, ICU nurse Heath Lamb, and COVID floor nurse Kristie Mish as the first McLaren Bay Region employees on Thursday, Dec. 17 to receive a dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. McLaren Bay Region received 975 initial doses of the vaccine and is expecting to receive additional quantities over the next few weeks.
“It feels pretty good, it does. I’m honored to be one of the five, I’ve been excited all day,” said Mish after she got the vaccination.
Mish has been hard at work in the trenches since the beginning of the pandemic. She’s worked in the 4th floor COVID-19 ward since it was established in March for patients. This year hasn’t been easy - while dealing with the virus and its effects on patients, Mish said she hasn’t been able to be with her daughter, who is over 7 months pregnant, since she had to stay away from her for safety’s sake during the pandemic.
“It’s rough, it is really rough. It has really brought us together as a floor to work, there’s so much devastation, there’s so much loss – calling families and telling them this is it, you know, sending patients to the unit knowing that we might not see them again, holding hands when the family can’t be there, going home to our families and not doing anything with our families,” she said.
Lamb has worked in the McLaren ICU for about six years so far in his 11-year nursing career. This year has stood out, but not for a positive reason, he said.
“We’ve seen a lot bad, a lot of tragedy has come through here,” he said. “I’ve probably seen more death in this past year due to COVID than I have in my whole nursing career.”
The vaccine is the light at the end of the dark tunnel, they said.
“I think this is really going to be a game changer for us. I think if everybody gets it I think we might six months down the road have some normalcy again,” Mish said.
Lamb said that it’s a great feeling seeing the COVID-19 vaccine begin to get distributed
“We’ve been losing, losing, losing everything, nothing we can do works. All we an do is just kind of watch our patients slowly slip away from us, they get torn away from their families and the heartache their families feel – it’s nice to finally be able to have a chance to turn that around, it’s nice to have a weapon to take to the fight now,” he said.
The McLaren Health Care system surveyed the interest of team members, medical staff, and contract workers about receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. McLaren is not mandating the vaccine for staff. To date, nearly 80% of respondents across the entire McLaren system indicated they are willing to receive the COVID-19 now or in the future.
Using the survey data and vaccination information, McLaren Bay Region announced that it created a plan to immunize its healthcare work force who are among the highest priority group. The hospital is anticipating that it will take several weeks for the vaccine to be administered to all it employees based on the availability of vaccine doses.
While officials aren’t expecting public vaccination until spring of 2021 if everything goes according to plan, the healthcare workers who got the vaccination this week are urging the community to join them and to get the jab.
“If I can do it, you can do it,” Richardson said.
Richardson added that she stepped up to get the vaccine because she wanted to protect her family while also setting a positive example for others.
“To show an example that this is just the right thing to do moving forward, that it’s safe you know, we trust science,” she said.
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