JOYCE:  And I had some very exciting and challenging situations before I had actually had the formal training in Anchorage. 

KAREN:  Can you talk about any of those?
 
JOYCE:  Well, one -- one night I got -- in those days, we didn't have telephones, we just had CB radios and stuff like that for communication. 
I got word I was needed down at the store, there had been a boat accident out in the harbor.  And three men had been drinking.  They came in with a skiff and didn't slow down and ran right into the side of one of the fishing boats that was anchored there.  Well, fortunately, they weren't thrown into the water, but there were three men with varying degrees of injuries.  I didn't even know what had happened when I left the house, I just took my medical bag and I didn't begin to have the things I needed.  But here that -- it was in the store, Saturday night after the Saturday night Orthodox Church service.  People were dressed up.  I know I was on my -- down on my knees beside one of the patients and saw this big, long, black robe, and looked up and there was a priest standing there.  He said oh, hi.  But nobody -- nobody was doing anything.  There was just one young man that was ready to run errands for me.  I needed safety pins, he went and found some on the store shelf. 
I sent him up here twice after things.  And I knew I needed some old sheets for bandaging and like that.  He brought back some, but it turned out some of them had been -- one of them had been turned in for an angel costume or something.  I used it anyway. 

KAREN:  Yeah. 

JOYCE:  But I had varying degrees what they call triage where you've got to decide which is most serious and that order.  One of them was determined he was -- that he wasn't hurt and he wasn't going to be taken care of.  And he had had both a chest and a head injury, and I knew that it was dangerous, so I had to call and ask for permission to give him something to calm him down, so we could get him onto a stretcher.  We had to devise three stretchers for these three patients.  And took care of everything.  We called the Coast Guard.  The Coast Guard has been our first line of defense, you might say, for years here.  One of my patients who died finally from his serious heart condition used to call them the White Angel of the North.  That was his designation for them.  We had quite a system, because I was having to use the CB to call back to Norman, my husband here, for the things I needed.  And send somebody, this person, back after them.  But the CB at the store was upstairs in the apartment, so I -- they -- we thought they had the shortwave radio to contact the Coast Guard.  Well, their radio was out.  So what Norman had to do from here was to call Port Lions.  Port Lions has telephones at that time.  And have them telephone the Coast Guard to send the plane over here.  That's actually what happened. 

KAREN:  Wow. 

JOYCE:  But anyway, we had three of them ready.  The Coast Guard plane only had two stretchers, they usually had to take one of ours because they -- and just two or three days after that, we had what I would call is our first health aide conference on Kodiak Island.  And the health aides came in from the different villages.  That was a big thing for us because we needed to have some exchange between us.  We were so isolated in those days.  Port Lions had a telephone, but that was the only village in the islands that did.  We were all dependent on radio.  And with the weather and everything, so we had some pretty serious things to deal with, all of us.  And it was just good to get together.  Anyway, we went out to the Coast Guard base to show us around and to show us what happened when we sent somebody in.  And the Coast Guard personnel began to talk about how very well I had their -- three accident victims and had them so very well prepared for evacuation.  Boy, that made me feel good.  I had taken first aid and -- and EMT type of courses.  Everything I could get.  So it did help with that.  But I wonder what they thought if the Coast Guard or the patient would have discovered tinsel and stuff. 

KAREN:  From the angel costume? 

JOYCE:  Yes.  Never got it back, so I guess it was okay.