Searching for a happy ending
Published in The State Journal May 30, 2015
Imagine pain similar to that of a bad toothache shooting through your lower back all day, every day — and there’s no way to get any relief.
That’s the life of Rose Miller — a wife, a mother of two teenage boys and a full-time state employee who suffers from polycystic kidney disease.
“They’re not giving me anything for pain,” she said.
Her husband, John, sometimes calls her Wonder Woman.
“…I don’t know how she does it,” he said. “She always makes time it seems like, even when she doesn’t feel like it.”
Rose was diagnosed with the disease after she was in a car accident in 1999. She was flown to the University of Kentucky Chandler Medical Center, where doctors performed emergency surgery.
There they found that one of her kidneys had shut down entirely because of trauma from the accident. Only a small percentage of the other kidney is working because of cysts.
“They said I’m OK for now, but this was something I’d have to deal with later on,” Rose said.
“Later on” has become now.
With the disease, clusters of cysts filled with fluid form within her kidney. Eventually they’ll grow very large, taking over the entire kidney, causing it to go into failure.
Rose’s remaining kidney is currently working at 12 percent. Once it drops to 10 percent she has to begin dialysis.
Going to be a challenge
Rose said if dialysis becomes a reality, it’s going to be a challenge.
“They hook you up to a machine where you’re sitting for four hours a day, while you have two needles in your arm.”
She said she would have to go three times a week, and with trying to keep up with that, her family and work, it would be exhausting.
“After (dialysis), you’re just so tired and so drained,” she said.
Right now she takes 12 pills a day. Eight of the pills are just to keep the cysts from growing at a rapid rate.
“(The pills are) just to try to maintain the kidney function where it is,” she said.
However, her doctor told her that she has a very progressive case of the disease.
“He said that most people are in their late 50s or 60s before they get to the point that I’m at.
“I’m only 44.”
Looking for a living donor
Rose is hoping to find a living donor before she’s forced to be on dialysis.
Unfortunately, because the disease is hereditary, her family members aren’t able to donate.
“Even if they don’t have the disease they could be carrying the gene — so that rules out all of my family,” she said.
Rose’s mother had the disease. She received a kidney transplant in 2010.
“She has done absolutely wonderful,” Rose said. “She’s pain-free and goes about her normal life.”
Rose is on the living donor and cadaver waiting list.
“Unfortunately where the need is so great, the cadaver list is a three-year wait,” she said.
Doctors are strongly encouraging her to find a living donor, which they say has many benefits over a cadaver kidney.
“The survival rate and the longevity of the person is better with a living donor,” Rose said.
A living donor can be male or female and any age between 18-70. However, they have to match Rose’s blood type, which is type O.
If someone is interested in donating, Rose said they should contact Todd Maynard, her living donor coordinator at the UK hospital, at 859-218-2937.
She said he would ask a series of questions regarding their medical history. After that, if he thinks they’re a viable candidate, he will send them to have lab work completed. Female candidates also need to be up-to-date on their mammograms and gynecological exams. Candidates also need to be smoke and drug free. All medical bills, except a donors yearly exams, are covered under Rose’s health insurance.
“Their main concern is making sure the donor is also going to be healthy,” Rose said.
If a donor is selected, Rose said they would be scheduled to have surgery at the same time. It would last 2-3 hours and be laparoscopic. There would be an incision of an inch or less. The donor is usually in the hospital four to seven days and can return to normal activities in one month.
Rose also added that she was told if the donor is female, she can still have children. However, doctors recommend they wait six months before getting pregnant.
‘Rose’s Plea’
In efforts to find a donor, Rose said Christa Bevins Emerich, who was her son Cody’s preschool teacher, made a Facebook Page called “Rose’s Plea for a Living Donor.” The page currently has just more than 100 likes.
Rose said Todd has had several people call, but he’s not at the point he can completely confirm he has a donor. He has told her to keep looking.
Her family hopes she finds a living donor soon.
“It would mean so much to me,” John said. “I pray every night that she gets one. I don’t want to see her hooked up to machines.”
Cody, 13, said he hopes she finds one so that they can continue to do family activities together. He enjoys being able to go out to dinner, go to flea markets and other festivities with his mother.
“On Sunday’s, we’ll go to Golden Corral as a family,” Cody said.
Just the other day, Rose said she was talking with her oldest son Cameron, 17, about her disease and he told her that “everyone is the hero to their own story.”
“Everyone sees themselves as being triumphant in their own story in life,” Cameron said. “Her (Rose’s) struggle is her main flaw, and she will hopefully overcome it.
“It will be a good ending to her story.”
Chasing a dream: Get to know FRMC nurse technician Danialla Green
Published in The State Journal July 24, 2016
It was a typical shift for Danialla Green, who worked as a concierge at a casino in her hometown of Mobile, Ala., when she noticed her coworker talking to a man at the valet counter. Seconds later, her coworker was on the ground with blood rushing from a stab wound.
Green said she ran out of the building to help him. She compressed the wound and talked to him to help keep him calm — then she woke up.
“I woke up and nursing is the thought that came to my head,” Green said.
Green, who said she is “literally chasing a dream,” left her casino job in Mobile and moved to Frankfort in June 2014 to begin a career in the medical field.
After her dream, she went to Job Corps in Mobile and talked with a counselor about how to pursue a career as a nurse. The counselor suggested she move to Kentucky, and through Job Corps in Shelbyville, become a clinical medical assistant.
After obtaining certifications for phlebotomy, medical assistance and electrocardiogram (EKG), Green enrolled at Kentucky State University and began taking classes toward earning a nursing degree.
In June 2015, Green was hired full-time at Frankfort Regional Medical Center as an emergency room technician.
“I was interviewed for three different departments, but I felt like ER with nursing school would give be the most experience,” she said.
For the past year, she’s been soaking up all of the experience and implementing it so well that her coworkers and managers recognized her as the hospital’s Nurse Tech of the Year.
State Journal: What has working at the hospital been like?
Green: Different. I want to be a nurse, so in the ER I’m associated with nurses, doctors and nurse practitioners, as well as, physician assistants.
There’re so many different areas and so many different people. You have to learn how doctors want things set up. It was a lot to take in.
The techs in the ER do a lot. You do everything from draw blood or someone may break something, or fracture something, and you may have to do a splint and you have to learn the different types of splints. Then they may need an EKG and we have a certain time period that we have to get that done. It’s a lot.
SJ: Has it been everything you expected?
Green: It’s been more a lot of times. Some days I think about how I never would have thought I would have been there.
I was always the person saying they would never go to nursing school. I would have never done it. I loved my job at the casino.
I literally just woke up one day and felt that I wasn’t fulfilling my purpose.
SJ: Do you think you’ll stay in Kentucky for a while?
Green: It’s nothing against Alabama. This is going to sound cliché, but I’m really going where God wants me to be. Right now this seems like it’s where he wants me to be.
It’s a nice area. This is a beautiful city. There’re a lot of nice things. If I want to travel to bigger towns, I can go to Louisville and Lexington.
It’s nice and calm. I love Alabama, I love visiting, but it’s just not where I’m suppose to be.
SJ: What are your plans after you get your bachelor’s degree?
Green: I went to a convention through CRNA (certified registered nurse anesthetist) Diversity. It was at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga.
They did a three day seminar where you do a panel, mock interview as you would for a certified registered nurse anesthetist and then on the last day you do a simulated lab.
That’s where I want my career path to go. You deal with one patient at a time. You have to know the patients history, you have to be one-on-one with that patient and even though the only thing you’re really doing is when they go into surgery you administer the anesthesia under an anesthesiologist, in some cases, in some cases you’re acting on your own.
That’s a three-year program through most schools, that I’ve noticed. And you have to have a year of critical care experience.
SJ: What do you like about Frankfort Regional Medical Center?
Green: It’s such a close-knit community and everybody here is really nice. I haven’t met a bad seed in the ER.
My managers here are awesome, they listen to you. If there’re areas for improvement, I don’t feel belittled by my managers when they try to tell me, “Hey, let’s do this a little bit different.”
Even with school — what kind of job do you have that will actually work with you with school? They want you to do school, so they will work around your schedule. With my shift, it could change. It’s beyond flexibility.
SJ: What do you get out of working in the medical field?
Green: I care for somebody. I’m a girl from Alabama. I knew nothing about Kentucky.
I come from a decent middle class family, like most people, but my eyes have been opened to people who don’t have the same opportunity as somebody else. Sometimes they need to see someone just pushing and doing something different, so they can do something different.
Like I said, I didn’t want to go to nursing school. You would have never thought I would have been in nursing school, and now I’m here. So maybe there’s a reason for that.
Maybe there’s a girl who is in the same situation, working a dead-end job and wants to possibly do something different. You just hope and believe that maybe you’ll push and you’ll be able to get there.
I do it because of empathy. I think it’s evident that a lot of people don’t care and don’t have a genuine spirit to just love people, and I do.
I want to show that one person that feels like everyone is against them, that I’m here to care for you regardless of what you’re in here for or what you did.
SJ: What areas of the hospital do you see yourself working in?
Green: I want to do surgery, but I definitely want to be an ER nurse. Before I go to graduate school, I have to have experience on the floor.
I would love to work in ER. That’s my passion. I wouldn’t really see myself being anywhere else, unless I had to be.
In ER, there’re so many different areas. You never stop. You’re always going and you never know what’s going to happen or what kind of patient you’re going to get — that’s exciting for me.
SJ: What do you say to those people working a dead end job and wanting out but not sure of what path to take?
Green: Pray and dream. That’s literally what I’m doing. I’m chasing a dream.
The journey to becoming Kentucky’s first female master distiller
Published in The State Journal March 28, 2016
As she was ending her senior year of high school in Oldham County, Marianne Barnes, like many of her classmates, was faced with the question, “What do I want to be when I grow up?”
She first had the thought that she might pursue a career as an interior designer or a linguist, however, she finally decided upon being a diesel mechanic.
But, fast forward approximately 11 years, and it’s not an automotive shop the 29-year-olds’ career path led her too, but a laboratory where she’s working as Kentucky’s first female master distiller concocting the world’s next greatest bourbon.
After high school, Barnes decided not to attend college right away, but instead help her mother with her business in downtown La Grange.
“It was called Paddiwicks. It started as a homemade candle business that grew into a consignment art and craft shop. We had a café and authentic Italian gelato,” she said.
After business slowed a year and a half later and the shop closed down, Barnes decided to start getting serious about what she actually wanted to be when she grew up.
“My dad suggested chemical engineering,” she said. “I started looking at what you can do with a chemical engineering degree. It’s a very versatile degree — you can work in chemicals, foods, cosmetics … really anything.”
In 2007, she was accepted into speed school at the University of Louisville and her sophomore year she was required to get an internship.
“I interviewed at a lot of different places, but what it came down to was a decision between renewable energy research or making bourbon for Brown-Forman in Louisville.
“I chose Brown-Forman because of how well-known they are for making (internships) meaningful. They don’t just make it busy work. You’re actually in a micro distillery learning how to distill, learning all the quality assurance tests and working in the lab.”
Her senior year, they offered her a fulltime position.
“I spent a lot of time in the Jack Daniels, Woodford Reserve and Old Forester distilleries. They also sent me down to Mexico to learn how to make tequila at Casa Herradura.
“Interesting enough, their tequila master distiller is a woman,” she said.
Her career at Brown-Forman escalated quickly and before she knew it she started training to become a master taster. Within a year she was announced as the new bourbon and Kentucky whiskey master taster for Brown-Forman.
“I had a very specific path labeled for me. Brown-Forman is an incredible company and I had so many opportunities to grow and learn — I just soaked it up.”
In mid-December 2014, Barnes came to a fork in her career path when she was approached by Wes Murray and Will Arvin, the new owners of the Old Taylor Distillery site located near the Franklin/Woodford County line.
“They invited me out to the site. They didn’t say ‘we want you to come work for us,’ but they were told that they needed to meet me.”
After she blew them off a few times, curiosity got the best of her, and she finally agreed to meet them.
“I really wanted to get down here and see what was going on.”
Toward the end of January 2015, Barnes decided to make the jump and signed on to be the master distiller for Murray and Arvin’s new distillery, Castle and Key. She was also offered a stake in ownership.
State Journal: What was your first visit to the site like?
Barnes: It was snowy. The grounds were gorgeous. It looked like a winter wonderland. It’s a castle in the middle of Millville. You feel like you’re in Europe.
I was also looking at it from a technical standpoint — there’s a whole lot of work to do, so I knew exactly what I was signing up for.
The site almost challenges you in a way. I knew by coming here the risk was how much I was willing to bet on my own skill set and figuring out how to do it in this place. I got really excited by that.
SJ: Was there anything that stood out the most that made you say “I’m in?”
Barnes: Probably the biggest draw here was rebuilding the distillery and creating a new brand. I really wanted to develop something new, and build a new legacy while rebuilding this incredible bourbon icon.
This place in particular has a lot of history. Col. E. H. Taylor was a disruptor and innovator, and hell-bent on quality and transparency. Those are all the things that I as a distiller also really value.
SJ: Can you describe your product and how you’re planning to set it apart from the rest?
Barnes: When I first accepted the job we had a celebratory party at Wes’ home and he had found two bottles of Old Taylor that had been distilled here in 1917.
Tasting that particular whiskey really inspired me and changed my opinion on what older distilleries were capable of.
Col. Taylor had made a great name for himself and he was pretty vocal that he had made the best bourbon in the world. That particular bottle was distilled in 1917 but wasn’t bottled until 1933 when Prohibition ended, so it sat in the barrel for 16 years. The complexity and flavor profile really appealed to me.
I’m taking that particular bottle as my inspiration for our core brand, which will be a bottle in bond that is at least four years old. I will be using non-GMO white corn grown locally.
(Col. Taylor) was pretty vocal about using white corn and he also used twice the amount of malted barely than anyone else. I don’t know if I can say the same thing today, but it will be a higher percentage of barley of most and a lower percentage of rye. It’s a very traditional bourbon recipe based on Col. Taylor’s historic recipe.
We’ll also be making wheat bourbon, a rye whiskey and an American malt whiskey.
Then I have four different styles of gin in the works.
The core gin brand, I’m calling it “the bourbon drinker’s gin.” I’m going to infuse some familiar flavors that Kentucky natives know well and would appeal to a bourbon drinker’s palate.
We’re also looking at a season gin expression that will be formed by what’s going on in the garden and what’s in season.
I’m also going to do a barrel-aged gin.
The last gin expression will be a gin hybrid. Something that’s not 100-percent Kentucky but a little sweeter and easier to drink like a liquor.
We’ll be the first one to go after gin as a real product. We want to grow it on its own. Of course we want to be known as a bourbon distillery, but we want to grow the gin intentionally. It’s not just something to fill the gap until we have brown spirits. We want to use the gin to create a runway and show off our skillset and make something great.
SJ: How does it feel being the first female master distiller in the state?
Barnes: I haven’t even really had time to let it sink in. It wasn’t anything I was ever considering. I was just following a passion and helping to revive a place. I am up for the challenge even though there’s a little bit of pressure. Everyone is supportive though.
I’m excited and fortunate to be a woman in the industry leading the charge.
SJ: Can you share any future plans for the distillery?
Barnes: We really have something special here at the site. We have 113 acres. There are more than 20 structures.
We have a big space to grow into. We’re kind of attacking it in phases.
In the future, we’re going to have a full service restaurant. We want to use our botanical trail and have the end of the property be a place to have picnic lunches and really enjoy the site — have more of a Napa feel to our distillery experience.
We’ll of course do tastings, but we’re also looking at doing a higher-level gin blending experience … a little bit of a look behind the curtain — to see what goes into making a gin.
Across the street in the administration building, we’re thinking that is the perfect spot to put a bed and breakfast in the future.
We’re also looking to potentially bring in some pretty well-known artists and doing a rotating gallery.
SJ: When will the distillery open?
Barnes: We’re keeping people in the loop on our website CastleandKey.com. People can sign up for our monthly newsletter.
Production target start date is the end of May — early June. We hope to have gin on the shelf in June.
The site will probably be open for tours in late summer.
Two men allegedly traffic 91 pounds of marijuana into Frankfort via small plane
Published in The State Journal May 13, 2015
Like a bad episode of “Miami Vice,” Commonwealth’s Attorney Larry Cleveland said, Kentucky State Police troopers greeted two men when they landed at the Capital City Airport in a small plane with allegedly 91 pounds of marijuana.
“The troopers were waiting on them because they had flown all over the country to get from California to Frankfort in an unusual flight pattern,” Cleveland said.
The two men, James Shearburn, 59, 111 Fairbanks, Pittsburg, Calif., and Dustin Burke, 27, 3191 Fry St., Oakland, Ky., had stopped in Kansas and Illinois, before landing in Kentucky.
When the troopers asked if they could search the plane and if there was anything illegal in the plane, they responded, “well … yeah … there’s some marijuana in the plane.”
The troopers found duffle bags full of marijuana, Cleveland said.
“The passenger says ‘I didn’t know there was any marijuana in there … I didn’t smell any marijuana’,” Cleveland said. “He said ‘I smoked some marijuana before I got on the plane and so that’s why I guess I didn’t smell any marijuana’.”
The pilot told troopers “I was just doing this as a job,” Cleveland said, “I like to fly planes for a hobby.
“When I got to Frankfort some guy was going to come up to me with my picture and I would know that’s the guy I was suppose to give the marijuana to.”
Shearburn is currently in California, while Burke is in Kentucky.
Cleveland said Shearburn will be brought back to Frankfort for the trial.
Shearburn and Burke were both indicted Tuesday by a Franklin County Grand Jury on one count of trafficking marijuana (more than 5 pounds), in first offense when they knowingly and unlawfully possessed with intent to sell greater than five pounds of marijuana. The charge is a class C felony.
Other indictments
Sir Abernathy, 28, 2713 Westonridge, Cincinnati, Ohio, was indicted on one count of convicted felon in possession of a handgun, a class C felony, and receiving stolen property (firearm), a class D felony.
Matthew Eastman, 37, 1322 Chinook Trail, Frankfort, was indicted on six counts of second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument, a class D felony.
Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Carrie Holton said there is video surveillance of Eastman cashing a total of $940 of forged checks at Check into Cash on Brighton Park Boulevard. Two of the checks belonged to his ex-wife and four checks were his ex-mother-in-law’s.
James S. Tinnell, 52, 1953 Greenbriar Drive, Mt. Washington, Ky., was indicted on six counts of willfully filing or making false tax returns or failure to pay tax, a class D felony.
Cleveland said Tinnell, a school bus driver, didn’t bother to file his tax returns for several years, or if he did, it was fraud.
Life is an adventure
Published in The State Journal, Aug. 18, 2014
From the jungles of the Amazon to the hills of Bald Knob, for Jack O’Donnell life is an adventure.
Since 1997, O’Donnell has called Frankfort home, but in the years prior, the 64-year-old traveled the globe living what he calls “a feral lifestyle” and learning many life lessons along the way.
“It (traveling) was always driven by surfing,” O’Donnell said. “That was always the destination.”
O’Donnell grew up in the suburbs of New York City and spent his summers at Seaside Park in New Jersey where his love of surfing began. After high school, he attended Manhattan College and worked toward a degree in economics.
However, in 1970, his junior year, he was arrested after being involved in a student demonstration protesting the bombing of Cambodia.
He along with six others, known as the “Riverdale 6,” stopped traffic on the Henry Hudson Parkway. O’Donnell was arrested and charged with four felonies and two misdemeanors, which were later dropped and his record expunged.
“But don’t believe that,” he said. “The system never forgets.”
Decided to travel
O’Donnell said he was headed to be an attorney just like his father, but once he knew his permanent record was stained, it was always going to be against him, so he dropped out and decided to travel.
“I did a lot of living outdoors, hiking and camping,” he said.
He spent a lot of time in Mexico and Latin America.
“It was a cheap place to live.”
In Latin America, he bought handicrafts and beaded earrings that he brought back to the U.S. and sold.
Later, he met an Irish traveling nurse and went with her to London, New Zealand and Australia. In Australia, he said he rented a car and traveled the country.
Eventually they made their way to Dublin, Ireland, where they bought a house together.
“It was an old workman’s cottage,” he said.
He was in the process of renovating it when they split up. He sold his portion of the house back to her and moved to Hawaii.
Frankfort connection
In the midst of his traveling, in 1977 O’Donnell was contacted by his college friend Kevin McNally of Frankfort. McNally invited him to Frankfort to help build a solar house in the Bald Knob area.
After helping McNally, O’Donnell left Frankfort and continued his travels.
In 1991, McNally invited O’Donnell back to Frankfort for a party where he met his now ex-wife, Margaret O’Donnell. They were soon married and, in 1995, had their son, Liam.
O’Donnell said they took the baby all over Mexico and Latin America when he was 5 months old.
“It was a cosmic experience,” he said. “Here’s a guy carrying a baby, with a wife breastfeeding. The women loved us. On buses, we would pass the baby around.
“All of a sudden, I became a human being.”
In 1997, they came back to Frankfort and Margaret went to work with McNally and his wife, the late Gail Robinson, as a defense attorney helping with their fight against the death penalty.
O’Donnell also signed on to help McNally and Robinson. For 10 years, he investigated murder cases.
“She (Robinson) taught me to latch on and not let go,” O’Donnell said.
“I worked on 20 to 30 murder cases,” he said. “Murder never takes a break.”
Aside from investigating, O’Donnell got involved with a charity that he and a friend ran in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico, building pasteurizing solar water heaters for the residents.
“I got welcomed into little villages where people lived in thatch houses. They built fires in the middle of their houses to purify water,” he said. “To give them that machine, that was really cool.”
The present
Now that he is divorced and his son, Liam, is grown and in college at Washington University in St. Louis, O’Donnell is living a somewhat slower life in Frankfort.
He has a house in South Frankfort and recently bought a property on Hanly Lane.
A house built in 1890 sits on the property. O’Donnell is in the process of restoring it using recycled materials. When completed, he plans for the house to be “off the grid.”
“This is my son Liam’s old Kentucky home,” he said.
The house has a kitchen, a bedroom and a dining area. It is currently only 300 square feet, but he plans to build a small addition.
Along with working on the house, he also has several raised garden beds he built using poplar wood.
In the beds he grows asparagus, potatoes and beans in “vegan” compost that doesn’t include manure. The compost is a mixture of grass and leaves, which he gets after homeowners clean their yards, and soil, water and other organic matter.
The future
As far as the future is concerned, O’Donnell plans to live at the house on Hanly Lane seasonally and continue traveling.
“There’s a lot of adventure out there,” O’Donnell said.
He knows he’ll take trips back to Seaside Park to surf and even wants to plan a surfing trip to Gaza. He also said he would like to travel to Sri Lanka.
“I’ve had so many good things happen to me,” O’Donnell said about the life he has lived. “I’ve learned a lot about God’s creation and humanity.”
But it’s the friends and connections he’s made in Frankfort that keep him coming back.
hannah brown photography 