Since being diagnosed with stage four Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age 13, Kathy Johnson of Williston has lived an extraordinary medical odyssey. From pediatric cancer to cardiac crisis, the 65-year-old Williston resident has approached a lifetime’s worth of serious medical issues, diagnoses and treatments with an irrepressible, take-on-all-comers attitude.

In 2025, Kathy and her care team faced a new challenge: How to make the risky and complex heart procedures she desperately needed possible at all. Damage to Kathy’s heart from cancer treatment decades ago not only gave her coronary artery disease – it had calcified her aorta along with her arteries, making many conventional and minimally-invasive surgeries impossible.

Join us as we follow Kathy’s story of resilience through the years and meet the surgeons and interventional cardiologists who planned and performed a first-of-its-kind procedure in the catheter lab at University of Vermont Medical Center – where they used an advanced form of life support called Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) to sustain Kathy and repair major damage to her heart.

When Trent Campbell suffered a series of strokes beginning in 2018, he and his wife, Nikki Juvan, knew their lives would change forever. Less than a decade later, in January of 2025, Montpelier resident David Goodman suffered a life-threatening stroke and made a complete recovery in about 30 hours.

For stroke survivors, time is brain. Join us this week as we explore the regional system built on technology and neurocritical expertise that is reshaping how leading-edge stroke care is delivered in rural communities.

We’ll follow Tent, Nikki and David on their journeys as stroke survivors and caregivers, and speak with experts in neurocritical care, stroke care and vascular neurology who helped create a rural system of stroke care that brings advanced subspecialty care to communities across a rural region of more than 1 million people.

Resources

Stroke Patient & Family Education

Stroke Awareness Vermont

Stroke Caregiver Guide

StrokeNet (Clinical Trials Information)

Pediatric Neurology

WDEV Airdate: 10/3/2025

Imagine having to shave your head after a hospital stay, because the team caring for you wasn’t able to properly care for your hair. 

Hair care in the hospital can be challenging – especially for people of color.  Join us this week as we sit down with the multidisciplinary team of nurses and other health care professionals at UVM Medical Center who discovered and developed the hospital’s Hair Equity Program, and the leaders whose support helped launch an innovative approach to advancing health equity and improving health outcomes. 

Created in partnership with patients and members of the community, the hospital’s leading-edge approach to holistic patient care attempts to move the needle on one of the most scrutinized measures of success in health care: patient experience and satisfaction. 

We’ll discuss mental health at home and in the classroom, the current state of chronic absenteeism and its impact on wellbeing and scholastic achievement and rural access to care. We’ll also highlight community-based support services that help students and families respond to challenges as they arise.  

Pediatric experts in public health, youth mental health and absenteeism share real-world solutions. They discuss new research that’s deepening our understanding of what students need to succeed, and they reflect on the back-to-school experience for parents and caregivers. 

Join Dr. Keith Robinson, Dr. Heidi Schumacher, and Dr. Steven Schlozman for an in-depth look at how to set students up for success this year. 

A spinal surgery gone wrong left John Killacky paralyzed and living in debilitating pain. After a traumatic hit-and-run accident, Emily Metcalfe woke up in the hospital, quadriplegic, and in need of months of physical and occupational therapy as she relearned how to walk.

On this episode of Living Healthy Together, UVM Health Network's podcast, John and Emily share their stories, their experiences living with chronic pain, and how the Comprehensive Pain Program at University of Vermont Medical Center helped them learn to control their pain, rather than be defined by it.

They're joined by Dr. Joshua Plavin and Laurel Audy, RN, two founding members of the Comprehensive Pain Program who reflect on their own roles building a unique, leading-edge approach to treatment and support. They share how the program's holistic approach to patient care and wellness challenges health care's status quo and could make an impact even for those who aren't living with chronic pain.

WDEV Air Date: September 12, 2025

When dementia and Parkinson’s made words hard to find, Allegra Miller and her husband, Bob Rinkema, found a new way to connect — through music at the piano. Their shared playing became a language of its own, even when conversation was difficult.

On this episode of Living Healthy Together, UVM Health Network’s podcast, Allegra shares her caregiving journey with her husband, following his diagnosis of Lewy Body dementia and Parkinson’s.

She’s followed by Dr. Sunny Eappen and Christine Werneke, who reflect on their own experiences with family caregiving and how this longstanding challenge continues to shape care in our communities.

Podcast Exclusive BONUS Interview -- Learn more about dementia care, memory care, at-home caregiving and the Dementia Family Caregiver Center. Lori McKenna, the center’s director, Joan Marsh-Reed, a psychologist at the center, and Audrey Winograd, director of the center’s Vermont Bridges Program, discuss how science and research provided the foundation for programs and services that support caregivers, the regional and national challenges facing caregivers, and what the Center’s team is working on right now to support at-home caregivers and those they care for every day.

Dr. Lewis First joins clinical leaders guiding work on physician education, clinical research and patient care to explain how values and vision helped create a unique "children's hospital without walls," make high-quality pediatric specialty care more accessible in rural communities, and continues to make Vermont a national leader in pediatric health and care.

WDEV Airdate: August 29, 2025

We dive into major Medicaid changes and their impact in our region. Dr. Sunny Eappen joins a panel of leaders from across our health system to unpack the impacts and share how our health system is helping patients, caregivers and rural hospitals prepare.

WDEV Air Date: August 22, 2025

Hear the gripping story of Steve Stahl, who survived a widow maker heart attack on the slopes of Mount Mansfield. Join special guest UVM Health Network CEO Dr. Sunny Eappen as we talk critical care, follow Steve’s inspiring road to recovery and discuss the future of cardiac care in our region.

WDEV Airdate: August 15, 2025