Dead animals everywhere!

Sorry for the blog delay. I have gotten lazy since starting my vacation in the Anchorage area with Denise.

Back to Wales. I went hunting for animals when I found a dead wale, dead walrus and dead seal. It was also littered with many dead starfish. I found many animal vertebrae and sent home a couple of walrus vertebrae and one huge whale one!

Sand dunes are not for burring people..would you agree?

I think I mentioned before that after the flu and diphtheria epidemic, there were mass graves placed. They were buried in the sand-dunes and this year due to erosion, the bodies started peaking out. Public health is involved and they dumped large loads of sand on top of them again. How long do they think this will help? I don't know much but I know sand easily washes away and it is a bad idea. It's a good thing you can't drink the water due to uranium because the water supply would come from where the mass graves are. As for treatment of the sewage. They have someone drive it out to a lagoon somewhere and fill it up. There is no actual treatment plant, but lots of open land. They also don't recycle here. I realize that it would be more money to gather plastics and cans and send them out on a barge every 3 months, but after years of being ingrained to rinse out your can and recycle it. It is almost sad to throw out a diet pepsi can.

Is everything dead in this town!

As I walked the beautiful beaches of Whales, I found many dead carcasses. Apparently a pod of killer whales had swam past the night before, but I missed them :( I found a dead whale carcass, a dead walrus and a few dead seal carcasses. No ivory left! That means no jewelry for Tanya. The other interesting thing was the starfish. There are hundred of dead starfish littering the beach. I was hoping that I might find a live one..and I did. During my walk during a storm I found hundreds of live, beautiful purple and yellow ones clinging to rocks for dear life. Of course trying to get close for pictures, I soaked my sneakers for the 10th time since I have been there. I will have to throw out my sneakers once I get home since they smell like wet dogs.

I am yet to find the men of Deadliest Catch...so far I have only found various body parts!

PS: the natives are always trying to sell you something. Jewelry, bone carvings, anything. I was walking the beach when a woman ran up to me with a book-bag full of crochets items. It was super cold and windy so I bought a hat. I think it's kind of charming!

No live whales!

You can see in the pictures the pale tan building..that was my clinic. I was the only phsycian there in months so my job was to see the chronic patients...DM, HTN, RA. Occassionally I would see acutes as well. I slept in the back of the clinic on a little bunkbed, apparently it is haunted as well, as told to me by the janitor. There was no working toilet..only a HONEYPOT (why is a bucket with a hole to pee in called a honeypot, I have no idea. There was nothing sweet about it!) May I never have to use a bucket for a bathroom again. There is only one functional shower in the village, $3 a shower, only opened from 11-4pm. I would shower during lunch and everyone laughed that I wanted to shower daily. The patients themselves were very sweet and I was assigned an Eskimo name. DR SHICK SHICK (shick shick means ground squirrel).

My patients were pretty much related to all my 3 health aides. I met their fathers, aunts, grandmother and everyone else. As far as meds and such, I had a few different antibiotics, some steroids creams, tylenol, advil...and if I needed anything more it had to be sent from Nome and will take a few days. I didn't have to medivac anyone into Nome for further treatment, but did complete some referrals. I treated some COPD, DM, HTN, tooth abscesses, rashes, otitis, psych, pregnancy..all in a days work. I had to do my own vitals, given my own vaccines, injections, joint injections...This is family medicine!

Unfortunately, as I said before it was very foggy most of the 4 days. I wasn't really able to see Russia and was disappointed.

The white igloo looking building was once the clinic. I would love to work there. The kids in town told me it is haunted. Is everything haunted?

There is no road to Whales!

You thought that Nome was rural....off to Whales. If you look at the picture in the last post, Whales is located about 60 miles from Russia. It is a town of only about 120 people. In the early 1900's it was one of the largest villages in the area. However, after the influenza epidemic and a diphtheria epidemic...we are down to few people. Most people in this town are related. Most have children by 18...if not a few. The village is dry so there is no "legal" alcohol, however many will import it which sometimes get them thrown in jail. I flew in on a foggy day, which isn't uncommon. I'm thankful to see that they have lots of instrumentation so we didn't fly into a mountain or the ocean. When we landed there was one of the health aides to pick me up on the ATV.

Out on the ATV!!

My new love it my loaned ATV. I want one when I come back to CT. Why do we even drive cars? I puttered around last Sunday. I went out of town about 10 miles and saw where the natives have their summer camps. Most of them either have fish camps or hunting camps. They are great colors like orange and pink. They are super tiny and I'm sure fit about 10 relatives in there when they go.

Can you believe they are related to Goats?

The muskox (Ovibos moschatus) is an Arctic mammal of the Bovidae family, noted for its thick coat and for the strong odor emitted by males, from which its name derives. This musky odor is used to attract females during mating season. Muskoxen live primarily in Arctic North America, with small reintroduced populations in Sweden, Siberia and Norway.

As members of the subfamily Caprinae of the family Bovidae, muskoxen are more closely related to sheep and goats than to oxen, but are in their own genus, Ovibos. Both sexes have long curved horns. Muskoxen stand 1.2 m (3 ft 11.2 in) high at the shoulder on average, with females measuring 135 to 200 cm (53.1 to 78.7 in) in length, and males 200 to 250 cm (78.7 to 98.4 in). Adults, on average, weigh 285 kg (628 lb) and range from 180 to 400 kg (397 to 882 lb). The thick coat and large head often suggests a larger animal than the muskox truly is, but overfed zoo specimens have weighed up to 650 kg (1430 lbs). Their coat, a mix of black, gray, and brown, includes long guard hairs that almost reach the ground. Rare "white muskox" have been spotted in the Queen Maud Gulf Bird Sanctuary.Muskoxen can be domesticated and yield excellent meat, milk and wool. The wool, qiviut, is highly prized for its softness, length, and insulation value. Prices for yarn range between $40 and $80 per ounce (28 g).

Muskoxen are social and live in herds, usually of around 10–20 animals, but sometimes over 70. Winter herds consist of adults of both sexes as well as young animals. During the mating season, which peaks in mid-August, males compete for dominance, and one dominant bull drives other adult males out of the group. Non-breeding males will often form male only herds of 3-10 or wander the tundra alone. During this period all males are extremely aggressive. Bulls will even charge birds if they are close by.

The muskox, or its ancestor, is believed to have migrated to North America between 200,000 and 90,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene period, when it was a contemporary of the woolly mammoth. It is thought that the muskox was able to survive the last ice age (Wisconsin glaciation) by finding ice-free areas away from prehistoric peoples. The muskox gradually moved across North America and arrived in Greenland during the late Holocene.Muskoxen have a distinctive defensive behavior: when the herd is threatened, the bulls and cows will face outward to form a stationary ring or semicircle around the calves. This is an effective defense against predators such as wolves, but makes them an easy target for human hunters. Besides wolves and humans, the only natural predators of muskoxen are the grizzly (brown) bear and polar bear.

MIghty Mighty Musk Ox!

My love of Musk Ox continue to grow. The babies look like teddy bears! I am currently stocking a herd that hands around Nome. They are about 15 big: moms, babies and big papa...he's got a big furry hump. On Saturday I worked my 24 hour shift. When I arrived the attending backing me up informed me that the musk ox were located by the new hospital they are building. So, my friend Jen let me hop on her 6 wheeler and drive down. They were there, but far out in the field. The tundra can be tricky. It looks flat, but there are lots of small ditches full of water (1 foot down or so.) So I forged through. My birks were soaked as well as my socks. I got pretty close to the musk ox, but I wanted closer. I was eaten alive again by the mosquitos. I watched them play, but they are known to charge and I didn't want to get too close!

Off to Whales, Alaska!

http://www.adn.com/2010/07/16/1370318/high-uranium-levels-found-in-wales.html

In the AM I leave on a plane to Whales, AK to work in the clinic as the only physician for 4 days. They do not normally have a provider other than a health aide. The health aides are scantly trained and given a manual to work as midlevel providers. They really do a great job for the minimal amount of training that occurs. I can't imagine trying to keep someone alive in respiratory distress who needs to be intubated, but no one can fly in because of the weather and trying to keep them alive by reading a manual.

Whales used to be one of the larger villages up here, but after the flu epidemic and an outbreak of diphtheria, it's down to about 120 people. It used to be upwards of 2,000.

There is no running water, no trees and if you read the article above, there is a high level of uranium in the water. I may have a healthy glow by the time I leave. I have been asked to bring coffee creamer, medications, saline, gauze and donuts. People don't frequently fly into the village and there is no grocery store. They live off the sea!

In addition, on a clear day you can see Russia from Whales. I sound like Sarah Palin!

Closed from dredging!

We don't have these in NY!

Scattered around Nome are old abandoned gold dredges. These can be located in small ponds, in the ocean or just out o the tundra. They are actually quite neat. This one is about 3 miles from my house. It is 5 stories high. I didn't go in because you need to know where the rotten floorboards are so you don't end up stuck in them. It was a beautiful day when I went with my roommate Karen. You can see at the back end that the buckets pick up he dirt and hopefully gold and bring it in to be screened and sorted. It looks like a great roller-coaster ride! My patient last night in the ER is a gold dredger and said that they are getting 1 oz every hour, which runs about $112.

Please note that due to the permafrost, it's difficult to dig holes and put items in them. Hence, telephone poles fall down. Not good!