12/11/2025
Dr. Mike Kiernan was working his shift at Porter Medical Center when an unsettling feeling stopped him in his tracks: “Imagine a young kid digging his fingers into the sand, trying to find a shell, but instead it was the miniscule layers of my aorta that those tiny fingers were dissecting,” recalls Kiernan, an emergency medicine physician of nearly 35 years.
🚨 Within minutes, Dr. Kiernan went from physician to patient.
Finn Yarbrough, RN, was by Mike’s side when he received his diagnosis. It was an aortic dissection – a tear in his ascending aorta, the main artery supplying oxygen-rich blood from the heart to the rest of the body. “With emergencies like aortic dissections, the name of the game is speed. The margins between life and death can be incredibly slim.”
For aortic dissections, every hour that passes untreated increases the chance of mortality by 1%.
🚑 While at work across town at Rainbow Pediatrics, Tawnya Kiernan, MD, saw she’d missed a few calls from her physician husband. She reached the hospital just as Mike was being prepped for an emergency transfer to UVM Medical Center, the nearest hospital capable of providing the cardiothoracic surgery Mike desperately needed. On her way to Burlington, Tawnya called her two adult daughters, Emily and Leila, who would soon travel from out of state to join her for the remainder of the ordeal.
In Burlington, Elizabeth Pocock, MD, readied her team to receive Mike. A cardiothoracic surgeon who studied at Baylor College of Medicine — one of the nation’s top training centers — Dr. Pocock had already performed more than six aortic dissection surgeries in the previous two months, an unusually high number for rural Vermont and northern New York.
“When Mike arrived, I told him we were exactly the team he needed,” she says.
💔 Their conversation lasted only minutes — Mike’s last memory before he went into cardiac arrest.
Resuscitation during an aortic dissection is especially risky — chest compressions can worsen the tear. A cardiac anesthesiologist performed just enough compressions to keep blood flowing to Mike’s brain and other vital organs while Dr. Pocock’s team opened his chest and accessed his heart.
“Our goal was to bring him back and get him on a heart-lung machine to ensure his body received the blood and oxygen it needed,” says Dr. Pocock. “We were fortunate — not many people in that condition come back.”
Mike remembers only one thing: Steppenwolf.
🔮 “All I could hear was ‘Magic Carpet Ride’ on repeat,” he says. “Trippy song, great beat — I think it was my brain telling me to hold on tight.”
After more than 8 hours of open-heart surgery, Mike began his recovery while on a ventilator in the intensive care unit. Darlene Hester, RN, was one of the nurses who cared for Mike and his family during his time in the ICU. “Seeing a loved one in intensive care is incredibly hard, so I try to treat each patient like I would my own mother or father – and their family becomes my family,” says Hester.
🐕 Over the coming days, as Mike continued his recovery, Tawnya and her daughters found warmth in the community of caregivers and everyday citizens around them. Tawnya and Leila recalled the unconditional love of therapy dog Rocko, an 8-year-old English Cream Golden Retriever, and his owner Debbie Page, who visited them in the ICU as part of Therapy Dogs of Vermont.
🎨 Emily, a long-time artist, found solace and emotional release thanks to volunteers like Lori Valburn from Art From the Heart, a volunteer group from Burlington City Arts that visits patients and families with a cart full of art supplies.
💕 “We found love and support from nearly everyone we encountered, even people who had zero idea what was going on with us – it was incredible,” says Emily. “Sometimes you think that the world has become so divided, but in those moments, we found the best of community.”
Mike was finally off the ventilator and awake as northern New York and Vermont prepared for the upcoming solar eclipse. Though he wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about it, Emily and Leila insisted he see it. He rolled outside with a group of patients to watch the moon slip across the sun.
🌑 “As we sat there in our wheelchairs glinting in the fading light, we all looked at each other,” Mike says. “It was something unspoken: a kind of brotherhood and sisterhood. Like, this is what we’ve got, baby. This is the wonderful world we live in. And we’re still here.”
