Nolita Madros, Transcript Section 2

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Nolita Madros,
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MARLA: And so did you work with someone else in Ruby?

NOLITA: Yes. Edna Peters.

MARLA: So she was your --

NOLITA: She was kind of like my mentor. She helped me train, showed me how to do different things, how to -- how to, you know, suture and different types of things with suture, how to do IVs. You know, she would help me along. She would show me a couple of times and then she'd make me do it the next time. So that was pretty cool.

MARLA: So were there any particular experiences that stand out from like your first kind of emergency that you had to deal with or anything that kind of stands out in your head from either of those two villages?

NOLITA: No, not really -- well, in Ruby, I got there on, like, Tuesday. Well, Edna left on Thursday. And I had, like, oh, one day CHA experience, and then I was on call. Which was okay, but she told me, you have to follow the manual.

And this -- this is the manual we use now, but back then we had another one, it was a white one, a white manual. A CHA manual. And she said just follow the procedures and talk to the doctor on call. It's like, oh, okay.

And I can't even remember who I sutured, but my first real emergency, somebody tripped, it was summertime, somebody tripped and fell and cut their arm.

And I knew it needed suturing, and it's like I'm on the phone with the doctor, Dr. James, and he goes, well how long have you been a health aide? And I said, well, three hours.

So, and he was really nice. He knew that I didn't know how to do it, and so he kind of step by step walked me through how to use the CHAM, and how to do the sutures, and I was, like, okay. That was cool.

MARLA: So was it -- it must have been pretty scary?

NOLITA: Well -- well, before bleeding, once you can -- once you can control the bleed, it's just the mess that looks scary.

MARLA: Yeah.

NOLITA: So.

MARLA: So not the suturing part?

NOLITA: Oh, no. No. Not to a sewer.

MARLA: That's great. So after Ruby, what did you do?

NOLITA: I went home and was the health aide over in Kaltag for about a year and a half, maybe two years. So.

And that was kind of interesting, but I don't know, it's a little harder to work at home. I got used to going home and not having to do anything. Then all of a sudden I'm working there and now work consumes you.

My son was a little bit older, which was good, but I -- I think going home was someplace I'd go to rest. I didn't really want to go there and work.

MARLA: And so does that mean then you'd have people coming knocking on your door or you're on call 24 hours and so --

NOLITA: Pretty much, yeah. Pretty much, yeah. Even now when I go home, people stop in at my house and say, well, I really need help, you really need to go to the health aide at the clinic.

You know, I can't give you any advice. But you know, you need to depend on the people that are responsible for your health care.

MARLA: Right.

NOLITA: So sometimes it was pretty hard to. Of course, you know, at the same time, major casualties, I would help.

MARLA: Yeah.

NOLITA: I'm always available for that.

MARLA: So you stayed in Kaltag for a few years, and then --

NOLITA: About '99, I decided, oh, I'll try itineranting.

So I went to the North Slope, up to the North Slope. Which was interesting. Because I went in November and it -- the sun had already gone down, and it was not -- not going to come up for a couple more months.

MARLA: Right.

NOLITA: But no, during the day, they say it's pitch black, but it's not. You still see -- you get brightness like from 10:00 to 2:00, then it gets dark. So it's not really -- you just don't see the sun for a couple months.

MARLA: Right.

NOLITA: And it took couple weeks to get used to that.

MARLA: So where were you being -- when you were doing itinerant work?

NOLITA: My first village on the North Slope was Nuiqsut.

MARLA: Okay.

NOLITA: And I got there the week that he had overbooked the clinic, I think. We already had two itinerants in clinic, we had the doctor and his nurse, we had dental and their staff, so we were pretty booked. I was so waiting for them all to leave on Friday.

MARLA: So being an itinerant means what?

NOLITA: You're CHA-ing, you're CHAP, and you go from village to village to provide health care coverage.

MARLA: And how long are you in each village?

NOLITA: It kind of depends. It kind of depends on when you're talking to your -- the office, or no, the CHAP office, how long they need you in the village. Some places they only need you for a week, week and a half, other places they just need you for more than three or four weeks.