On the track at Churchill Downs is where Hall of Fame horse trainer D. Wayne Lukas spends most of his time. You’ll find him there seven days a week. The word vacation is foreign to Wayne. He doesn’t slow down. His alarm goes off every morning at 3:30 a.m. Then, once on the track —…
Lee Dulaney did her best to ignore the pain in her right hip for years. Steroid injections helped, but the pain persisted. “I’d get steroid injections, and it would feel better for a while; and then the pain would come back.” Lee said. “People would say, ‘You’re limping,’ and I’d say, ‘I know. It hurts.’”…
During his 30-year coaching career at the University of Louisville, legendary Basketball Hall of Famer Denny Crum was prepared for the toughest matchups on the court. Off the court, two strokes in two years not only caught him off guard but proved to be a formidable opponent. Now, one year after his debilitating second stroke,…
When Emily Carr began experiencing a baffling array of symptoms — pain when she stood up, dizziness when she leaned over, severe migraines and memory loss — she thought it could be a brain tumor. A trip to her primary care doctor and then an ear, nose and throat specialist didn’t bring a diagnosis. Six…
With COVID-19 weakening her body, Hannah Jones, 24, was at risk of a heart attack. She was placed on a ventilator so she could breathe. It was very possible she would die. Two days after getting an infusion of plasma donated by a COVID-19 survivor, she was out of intensive care and on the road…
Louisville sports journalist Jody Demling doesn’t remember his parish priest, the Rev. William M. Bowling, administering the sacrament of anointing the sick. He can’t remember the nightly phone calls from his wife and children. Many of the health care providers who tended to him when no one else could are a blur. He will never…
David and Mary Newton haven’t spent more than a few days apart since they were married 47 years ago in Loretta, Kentucky. As their anniversary approached, Mary was recovering from surgery at Norton Hospital. Visitor restrictions required by the coronavirus pandemic meant David could not be by her side. “It was pretty hard,” Mary said,…
Maureen Loftus, R.N., saw her childhood neighbor lying in the intensive care unit (ICU). His eyes were closed. A ventilator helped him with the breath that COVID-19 had taken away. He was alone in the room. “I honestly think that might have been one of the only times I had seen him without his wife…
When Jamie Lowry arrived at work at Westwood Golf Course early one fall morning six years ago, he was 43 years old and looking forward to the birth of his second child. His wife, Jennifer, was 8 1/2 months pregnant. A heart attack was not on the radar. Jamie was working on the Scottsburg, Indiana,…
Russell F. Cox, Norton Healthcare president and CEO, admits he was not a very good patient in the past. Before an employee health and wellness initiative – N Good Health – started in 2012, he rarely went to his primary care provider. “My blood pressure was always right on the borderline and the doctor would…
Margaret Taylor, 72, started smoking as a 14-year-old growing up in Tell City, Indiana. It became an addiction of at least a pack a day that lasted a total of 46 years. “Things were different back then, and it’s just what you did,” she said. She was what you would call a heavy smoker, smoking…
The last thing Keith Drury remembers from the day his heart stopped is driving to a job site near the Kentucky River. He doesn’t remember going into cardiac arrest, the CPR or the emergency helicopter flight to Norton Brownsboro Hospital, where he was put into a medically induced coma to allow his heart to rest…