The Judys Move To Bethel

Work has begun!!! Alex and I have successfully made it through hospital orientation and have progressed onto our respective departments. Since Alex has been a physician for a long time, there won’t be much of a learning curve for him, except when it comes to the electronic medical record. Since he’s kind of a techie, he’ll be ok. Me, on the other hand, will have a big learning curve as I transition from a clinical role (mostly in emergency medicine) to a teaching one.

Being in Bethel for two weeks without working was a good decision. We know our way around and have scoped out the town. Most of the streets have native names, with the occasional English translation written below it, however no one seems to ever tell you the street name. They will give you a house number in a certain subdivision and you drive around until you find it. One subdivision has lovely named streets (Ptarmagan, Makqaina, Nengqerralia, Ayabinar), but people say First, Second, Third, or Fourth road and then describe the house. Good thing the streets aren’t very long so driving around the block doesn’t take too long. But I wonder if the locals are creeped out by our truck continually driving slowly as we scope out houses.

Alex was a smart man and actually brought boots. He’s been tromping through the tundra bird watching and taking beautiful pictures. He’s also become a Facebook fiend and posted some of the pictures there. If you haven’t looked at them, I’ll post some here:

Brad spent the last week at Camp H2O at the local pool. He swam, learned a little judo, had dance class, and watched movies. I think he had a good time and came home pretty tired each evening. Brad also scored a goal in his soccer game. He has a good coach and actually spends some time learning fundamentals. We haven’t been rained out yet, but I’m waiting for the day.

There are many churches in town: Catholic, Moravian, Russian Orthodox, Baptist, Lutheran, and a smattering of other Christian denominations. Immaculate Conception is the name of the Catholic Church we’ve attended for 3 weeks. The homily was given by a deacon last Sunday, and was said in Yupik first, then English. The Our Father was sung in Yupik the past two weeks and I was all set to follow along in the prayer book only to have it said in English. The Filipino group in town hosted a brunch after church last Sunday—fried noodles with veggies, egg rolls, and a rice cake thing that was gooey and yummy. Sorry, no photos. We ate lunch with a doctor that is Alex’s cubicle mate.

Alex has a cubicle with a small desk. No filing cabinet or drawer. I guess that is a subtle way of encouraging him not to spend too much time there. The doctors, Nurse Practitioners, and Physician Assistants are all crammed into a small room full cubicles. It is affectionately called “Club Doc”

I, on the other hand, have an office with a door. I have lots of shelf space and TWO filing cabinets. I don’t think the office had been cleaned in quite some time and I spent a good hour with bleach wipes cleaning up. Found a fingernail. That was gross.

I’ve done a little reading on the Community Health Aide (CHA) Program. It’s amazing. People are chosen by their community/tribe to come to Bethel and learn to be an CHA. The go through 4 training sessions with 3 weeks spent with didactic content and one week in clinical. Then they are sent home to care for their village. Each session builds on the previous and with the new skills learned, the aide can perform more and more duties. The aides now are in session III, but have done more than me, and I assume more than a lot of NPs/PAs/MDs. Some have delivered babies. One spent 4 days with a guy that was shot in the chest because the weather was too bad for the Medevac plane to land. One helped a PA deliver a baby at 29 weeks (and that child is alive today). The program is almost 50 years old and the aides provide preventative and primary care to thousands of Native Alaskans. As I said, it’s amazing. Below is the geographic area that the Bethel hospital serves. Bethel is in the middle of the black villages. Alex will be the "village doctor" for the coastal communities that are in purple.

I think the barge with our belongings, boat, and truck left on June 17. We didn’t know our stuff was going on the same barge as the truck and we didn't know it was going to leave 3 weeks after we dropped it off. Had we been privy to that information, we could have spent a little more time traversing the country and maybe I wouldn’t have had 5 hours of sleep in a truck stop. Hindsight is 20/20 as they say. But at least we know the stuff is on its way.

We bought a grill! A huge Weber charcoal grill was on sale, so we got it. I suppose we could have brought the one we had in Michigan, but there was no way it would have fit in the U-Haul. We are breaking it in by slow cooking a muskox brisket that someone gave us. We’re told it’s mild like beef and quite tastey. In actuality, it was kind of chewy, but had nice flavor.