Next stop Unalakleet and Savoonga




Leaving Nome in a fog - literally and figuratively

 
I don't have all my pictures back from this leg of recent trip, post these later.  Norton Sound (tribal health agency out of Nome) sent me to two villages for consideration while interviewing with them.   Village providers can be medical doctors or midlevel providers like me (nurse practitioners or physician assistants); the clinics are staffed up with health aides who have been trained specifically to handle most minor problems but always jump for joy when a provider is on board.  They take 'first call' nights and weekends, but if they feel problem requires it, they call provider in.  Trauma unfortunately rather common, often related to alcohol and ATV and snowmobile accidents. 

Very critical patients can be Med-Evac'd out to Nome (at great cost, about $15,000 trip) or kept in clinic "ER" until next commercial flight, twice a day, bush planes - your patient may be seated next to sled dogs in crates. Weather is another factor.  Always possible that if you don't send patient out in time, you will be 'socked in' by ice-fog, blizzards, high winds, low ceilings, etc. and you'll be winging it with an "ICU patient" in the clinic for three days until it clears.

The bush plane was Cessna today - makes two little 'stops' - picks up someone at St. Michael's and drops off packages at another village, Stebbins, on runway of gravel, I swear looked to be about 600 feet long! 




Headlands - coming into St. Michaels

 

Next stop, Unalakleet is on the mainland, tucked inside Norton Sound further south.  Trying very hard to be 'regional' hub, a mini-Nome, as it were. They were frantically laying macadam roads while I was there - trying to beat onset of winter which stops all such projects. I asked if they were laying special sub-surfaces because of frost heave; the surprising answer was "NO."  Boy, are they gonna be sorry; on the other hand, there's the economic stimulus from unending road repairs.

Again, beautiful volcanic rock beaches for miles, lots of driftwood, seaglass, other storm detritus. 






Coming into Unalakleet



Savoonga...whole other world.  On island of St. Lawrence, in middle of Bering Sea, closer to Russia than mainland U.S.   Not a small island and very mountainous interior with snow patches all year round; one other village about 70 miles away (should you be brave enough to try sno-go trails), Gambell. 

More on St. Lawrence Isle in next post.