Hannah Anderson, Transcript Section 5

Community Health Aide Program Project Jukebox

Hannah Anderson,
Transcript Section 5

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HANNAH: By then, when I got done with the second session, I came home to my house all built and all.

MARLA: Oh.

HANNAH: Yeah. Real nice. People took care, you know, and had the fire going, nice and warm. But I had no running water. A wood stove for heat.
And an outhouse. And -- but comfortable. You know. I had all my furniture shipped up and all that. And I was comfortable that way.

And then I moved all the medicines and everything they had. My sister Rhoda was in FAA then, she took care of like the freezable stuff of medicines at her house. Everything kind of got moved by then, little by little, to here, to my house. And the extra bedroom back there was my clinic.

MARLA: So you worked out of your home?

HANNAH: I worked out of my home for over a year. Way over a year. Almost a year, going into two years.

MARLA: What was that like?

HANNAH: It was -- it was all right. I got used to it, you know. There was no problem.

The problem was the water. We were hauling water then and -- and keeping -- sterilizing things was like you had to boil, you know, boil things. We didn't -- we weren't totally disposable. We had to -- like our suturing, we suture stuff, we had to boil those and sterilize them. And they taught us how to do that, of course. Now everything is in a package, disposable.

MARLA: Right. So you use it once and then it's gone.

HANNAH: Yeah. Well, of course, needles, stuff like that was disposable, but your instruments.

MARLA: Right.

HANNAH: Yeah.

MARLA: Right. And does that mean that people came here on an appointment or did they come --

HANNAH: Well, I had a telephone. They were able to call and say, you know, a problem, I want to see you. Come on down. You know.

MARLA: Right. Yeah.

HANNAH: They just -- and we did a lot of -- we covered in this area, Evansville, covered outlying, Wiseman, Anak -- well, not Anaktuvuk. Well, we got some stuff from Anaktuvuk, I got some things from Anaktuvuk because they -- and Travis Creek, all the people that live out in the outlying out of here.

MARLA: You were health aiding -- you were taking care of people.

HANNAH: Yeah.

MARLA: Like in a 50-mile radius?

HANNAH: Yeah, I would say Travis Creek is 50 miles. Wild Lake. I saw people from Wiseman, they would come down here. You know, like. And I worked a lot with -- with the Public Health nurses or the school nurses.

MARLA: How often did the Public Health nurses come?

HANNAH: Twice a year.

MARLA: And what did they do?

HANNAH: They -- they -- well, they screen. They work at the school. We had 20 some kids then. You think now we've got three kids in town. Yeah, there was some 20 kids in school then, you know.

And of course, the school nurse would come up and Public Health nurses and people from our health service in town. Everybody. There was not ever too many places to stay back then, so a lot of people stayed with me, too.

MARLA: Okay.

HANNAH: Our CI's, you know, coordinator instructors.

MARLA: Okay.

HANNAH: Their PA, physician assistant, coordinator instructors to the health aides.

MARLA: How did that work?

HANNAH: It worked good.