“We were singing together in a vocal jazz group and we instantly clicked, and never had anyone else.”
Caitlin and Andy Celella were 15 when they met at Cheshire High School. They made it through college, studying abroad and into a young family.
“Ralphie and Vinny came a few years later because we got married when we were 24,” Caitlin explained.
And after 15 years, there was a challenge they didn’t see coming. Andy, a nurse practitioner at a local hospital system, had a seizure in the middle of the night in June of 2019.
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Caitlin made split second decision.
“He can’t wake up among his coworkers,” she recalled telling paramedics. “He’s gotta go to Yale.”
She says it was a fateful decision because within hours, they had a diagnosis: it was a brain tumor and their treatment at Smilow Cancer Hospital began within hours.
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“Two or 3 a.m. we were sleeping, napping together in the bed, and they woke us up and they said - the ER doc was crying -- and he said, ‘you’re going to need to talk to our surgeon.’”
Andy’s first craniotomy shortly followed.
“Dr. Moliterno opened his head 3 times. And every single time he was able to stand right up almost in the ICU and walk right out of there still talking. Still able to spend time with his kids, and me and -- just -- they gave us four years,” she said.
The pair was open and honest with their little boys throughout the process and they faced the challenge as a family.
Andy passed in June of this year, almost exactly four years after his diagnosis. That extra time is why she says the Closer to Free Ride is so important.
“It allows patients to get the care that they need and what’s better than that?”
The money stays at Smilow Cancer Hospital and Yale Cancer Center for research, treatment and patient support.
“Knowing that we had options for research, knowing that we didn’t have to drive all over the country. We didn’t have to go to Europe, we didn’t have to go to some weird little island where they thought they had the answer. Yale already had it all.”
That included a caring team that added her husband as a member in the treatment plan.
“I have so many pictures of him with his head all wrapped up and they flipped the screen and they’re talking next to him,” Caitlin said. “And that was so meaningful for him to get through the process as a colleague.”
A few weeks after his third craniotomy last fall, Andy completed 25 miles in the virtual Closer to Free Ride, finishing 10 minutes faster than his wife. The pair raised $11,000 dollars last year.
“Everyone wants to be able to do something. Everyone wants to have him be able to read and go back to work and spend eternity with his kids, and we are not able to do that, so everyone was happy to give to help his team.”
This year she’s riding 25 miles again.
“Last year, I actually had everybody I was riding for sharpied – all their names sharpied all over my arms,” she said. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do yet because, I mean, I could tattoo his name all across my face and it wouldn’t be enough.”
But, when it comes to the Closer to Free Ride, she says any donation, any number of miles helps.
“It’s just so meaningful. Everybody there knows how important it is and everybody there, without a doubt would ride to the moon and back if we never had to do this again.”
She has a tattoo on her wrist of a note Andy wrote one day and left on the counter, a reminder that’s always with her.
“He loved hanging out with his family. He loved working around the house. He never sat down. He was always working on something and doing something and helping someone. And he did it all,” she said with a pause.
“They say about everybody who dies that ‘oh, they were the best,’” she said. “He was the best.”
