Berklee trained composer Sarah Gromko left film scoring for speech language pathology and now helps adults recover voice after stroke, ALS, brain injury, and cancer. In EP431 she explains aphasia and motor speech disorders and shares how melody helped a 16 year old gunshot survivor say I love you Mom again.

After surviving brain cancer at 21, Matthew Zachary examines how modern healthcare policy repackages risk as freedom. From cash subsidies to math free promises, this essay exposes why consumer style healthcare fails the moment illness enters the room.

I was 21. Brain cancer came via a blinking answering machine. There was barely an internet. No young adult programs. We kind of all just died back then. But I didn't. I've watched three decades of impossible become ordinary—and it's been the greatest terrible privilege. 2026 is the Year of the Patient.

People call it overnight success. From the inside it looks like decades of repetition endurance and saying uncomfortable truths out loud. This reflection examines advocacy patience family grounding and why progress in healthcare only comes through time memory and staying power.