Barbara Johnson, Part 1, Transcript Section 15

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Barbara Johnson, Part 1
Transcript Section 15

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KAREN: -- what did you do with your kids?

BARBARA: He took care of them. You know. Either that or my mother-in-law did. My mother-in-law or my foster mom would take care of them for me. Because we would -- we would be gone like maybe three weeks out of a month or else a whole month. And that was pretty lonely.

KAREN: Yeah.

BARBARA: Because I remember when we would go there -- when we first went there, we were kind of afraid because it was -- Anchorage was a big city for us to go to. You know. And to be able to go around.

We always, when I say "we," I mean all the other health aides that were in training, too, we'd travel -- we'd go off together shopping and stuff like that.

KAREN: Yeah.

BARBARA: It's a big city, we didn't want to get lost or anything.

But we had, I think on the third floor, we had to -- that was where our training was, and when we'd first come up there to go to training, we'd be trudging up the steps, you know, because there's no elevator.

And pretty soon we would get a little faster, and by the time we left, we would really be able to run up the steps, you know, after. But it always seemed kind of funny because we would be so slow trudging up the steps when we first got there, you know.

But it was good because we got to stay in the clinic at nights and, you know, watch while they -- the patients were being taken care of and stuff.

And we got to go on the floors and talk to patients, too. We'd go through with the doctors and, you know, they let us know what's happening. And it was really good.