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Janet Kowalsky, D.O., grew up on a small farm in Ronceverte, W.Va. Her participation in youth programs such as 4-H and Future Farmers of America showed a love for animals that originally led her to plan for a career as a veterinarian.

While studying animal science at West Virginia University, though, Kowalsky spent a summer working at a veterinary facility and found the experience heartbreaking. After graduating, she returned to her hometown and began a job as an emergency room registration clerk at Greenbrier Valley Medical Center (GVMC).

“I didn’t think I’d be there long,” she said. “But as I worked there and interacted with patients, I started thinking that maybe a career in human medicine was the right path for me.”

Kowalsky began taking prerequisite courses for medical school while working part-time as an EMT in Greenbrier County, and later returned to GVMC to work as a medical scribe. John Johnson, D.O., a physician who worked in the hospital’s emergency room, gave her some much-needed support along the way.

“I was grateful for John’s encouragement. He saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself. Even when our ER was very, very busy, he saw that I kept a calm and cool head and was still courteous and able to spend time with patients who had questions,” Kowalsky said.

During her time at 91�㽶��Ƶ, she participated in the Rural Health Initiative (RHI) and received the Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield West Virginia Farson-Smith-Earley Award. Now, Kowalsky is serving in a family medicine residency at GVMC.

But her career as a physician doesn’t mean she has stopped working with animals. Kowalsky and her husband, Dennis, operate a farm in the small town of Wayside, W.Va., where the couple wrangles 153 cows and a much smaller number of chickens and goats.

“You’re always trying to keep up, because there’s always some task to be done,” she said. “I’ll get on the tractor and rake the hay, then Dennis will come behind on another tractor and bale it. I’ll help make repairs to the fence or put up new posts. And in the spring and fall, we bring the cattle in and give them vaccinations.”

Kowalsky said that in some ways, a day on the farm isn’t all that different from a day at a health facility. In either profession, you never know what to expect from one day to the next.

“In farming, nature makes things unpredictable,” she said. “A wind storm could come through and take out all your trees, or a cow could have difficulty calving and you have to pull the calf. Medicine is the same way, because with each patient that comes in, you’re uncertain of what the visit is going to require.”

91�㽶��Ƶ’s RHI program, in which students participate in unique experiences to learn about local industries and the daily lives of West Virginians, seems a natural fit for a woman whose hobbies include fly-fishing and hunting deer and turkey. But Kowalsky said her most memorable RHI experience had little to do with nature.

“I had the opportunity to go to the West Virginia Rural Health Conference, and one of the sessions was on substance addiction,” the Class of 2019 graduate explained. “The conference included people from Lily’s Place, in Huntington, where mothers and babies bond after a child is born with neonatal abstinence syndrome. Hearing stories and seeing firsthand how the opioid epidemic has affected West Virginia’s rural families was eye-opening.”

At the culmination of her medical education, it was Johnson, whom Kowalsky calls her mentor, who hooded the new graduate during the school’s commencement ceremony. Kowalsky said she’s pleased to have the chance to care for southern West Virginians.

“I’m excited to be able to help the people I know the best — those I grew up with, went to school with or know through the community,” she said. “It’s a challenge, and I’m excited to meet that challenge and help people to the best of my ability. It’s a dream come true.”