Laura Glesby File Photo
Wooster Square/Mill River Alder Ellen Cupo.
Ellen Cupo learned how to walk again before making it back to her seat in the Board of Alders chamber.
Cupo, who represents Wooster Square and Mill River’s Ward 8, returned on Monday night from a four-month medical leave after undergoing brain surgery in April.
Cupo said at the latest monthly full Board of Alders meeting on the second floor of City Hall that the surgery, which removed a problematic cyst from her brain stem, was high-risk. “It went well,” she told her colleagues, “but I still have some lingering effects on my speech, so I’m gonna try to speak slowly and clearly.”
She said after the meeting that she needed to relearn how to walk after the operation.
In a “point of personal privilege” at Monday’s meeting, she thanked her family, her fellow alders, and her constituents for their support during her leave.
She also thanked “our Connecticut legislators, specifically the New Haven delegation, for passing Paid Family and Medical Leave,” as well as her union, Yale’s Local 34, which she credited with allowing her to take “four-and-a-half months off of work to heal and not have to worry about the cost of my medical care or hospital stay.”
“My time away only renewed my fire and my fight for working people,” Cupo said. “Everyone deserves a union, and the protection to take care of themselves when they have to have life-saving brain surgery, so I’m really happy to be back.”