Hannah Anderson, Transcript Section 7

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Hannah Anderson,
Transcript Section 7

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HANNAH: A little bit of hardships, I thought, you know, after living in Fairbanks, modern homes and stuff like that.

MARLA: Yeah.

HANNAH: I thought, what am I doing? I'm going backwards. I'm going, like, back to when I was a child up here.

MARLA: Right.

HANNAH: Outhouse, honey bucket, having to dump it out to the outhouse. Hauling water. Heating water for everything. Taking a bath in a small tub. And going, what am I doing? Why am I doing this.

And I started to think this after about two years of doing it here. Then I thought about it for a while and I go, why am I -- why am I making this such a hardship? I grew up this way.

MARLA: Yeah.

HANNAH: Hauling water, dumping out and doing this and that. Don't make it a hardship. I grew up this way.

MARLA: Right.

HANNAH: So then my attitude changed, I guess, and so it wasn't so bad again. But then by then, our council, you know, was pushing for water, village clean water, Village Safe Water, I guess it's called.

MARLA: Right.

HANNAH: And we got it.

MARLA: Oh, good. So when the clinic was built, did it have water?

HANNAH: They didn't have water there, either.

MARLA: Okay.

HANNAH: So we drilled a well right shortly after the wells were drilled up here.

MARLA: That must have made things much easier.

HANNAH: Yeah. A whole lot easier. The whole water system over there for the council now in the clinic and everything is that same well that was drilled back then.

MARLA: Oh.

HANNAH: So then the clinic, our clinic got running water, flushing toilets, every home got running water, flushing toilets, which was --

MARLA: Was awesome?

HANNAH: -- awesome. Uh-hum. Wonderful.

MARLA: And then were you the only health aide at the -- at the clinic when it opened?

HANNAH: No. I had an alternate health aide, Naomi Castello was my alternate health aide.

MARLA: And so as an alternate, that meant that you were able to --

HANNAH: On my days -- on odd days off -- I mean, once in awhile the health aide, you know, I'd go into town or go somewhere, she'd cover for me.

MARLA: Okay. And did you hold, like, clinic hours?

HANNAH: We had four-hour clinic. Yeah.

MARLA: Okay. And then --

HANNAH: But on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

MARLA: Yeah.

HANNAH: Yeah.

MARLA: What was that like? Can you tell me about that?

HANNAH: You were just on call all the time. You know, you were aware of it, and when the phone rang, what now, type of thing.

MARLA: Right.

HANNAH: And it isn't always like that.

MARLA: Can you tell me about a particular patient or something that comes to mind that you --

HANNAH: Yeah. It's quite a few of them, but I guess the one that's -- and Naomi and I both, she had a -- she and her husband had an airplane. And Naomi and her husband Ron Castello had air carrier here and had radio in touch with different villages, Wiseman, mining companies. And Ron, her husband, was doing -- you know, flying their airplane. And Brooks Range Aviation it was called.

And Naomi was working at their office and she got a call from a mining company up here out of Wiseman. And she called me up and she says, we have a bad-y. And I said, what? And she said, well, a mining company, somebody fell from -- fell 15 feet, I think. I think she said 15, somewhere in there. And they want us to come.

And it's close to the pipeline and I think they had, let's see, medics close by. And I guess my question was, what about the medics, you know, that's closer to them. They want the health aides. So.

MARLA: So you actually flew out.

HANNAH: So -- so their pilot, Ron and Naomi's pilot flew us to Wiseman in a 207-type airplane. And we flew to Wiseman, got on a helicopter, flew up to this mine, and spiraled down into this mining camp. Landed the -- and we responded to -- to the patient who was Swann Drilling and it was --

MARLA: So.

HANNAH: I guess they were -- evidently they were putting up a building and they were working on it and he fell on this cement floor.

MARLA: Oh.

HANNAH: Cement.