ROSE:  All right.  Let's say I knew that much.  That's pretty little.  But it's mostly by doing (whispers) you know, the pap smear.  Yeah.

The young doctors, they show me how to do pelvic exam, pap -- pap smears, and what the normal looks or what ain't normal.  Then I -- I caught on to that.  The Public Health nurses helped me quite a bit, how to palpate the abdomen.  Well, okay, that's -- that's all I knew.  And I didn't know all the emergency techniques, how to look for that in the abdomen.
 
But anyway, in Anchorage, Dr. Walter Johnson is the one that taught us how to do the abdom -- abdominal exam for emergency signs.  Let's say appendicitis or else other stuff going on, they teach us how to feel the liver or the spleen or all whatever is down there inside a human -- human anatomy. 

MARLA:  And where were you when you learned this from Dr. Johnson?
 
ROSE:  Dr. Johnson.
 
MARLA:  Yeah.  Were you here in Hughes -- in Huslia? 

ROSE:  Anchorage. 

MARLA:  Or were you in Anchorage? 

ROSE:  But I -- I took all the notes.  I took all the notes.  And I had it in my head.  By the time I come back to the Bush.
 
So pretty quick I -- somebody -- I came up with -- I came up with that over the -- over the radio, because I just came back from class and then that was my patient, and this was my patient to be shipped out or medevaced, or whatever. 

And I heard -- I was talking with Dr. James in Tanana, and Dr. James, he got happy because he didn't be lost, he didn't get mixed up.  And I heard him talking, he was -- he was happy.  I probably -- I don't know.  I don't know. 

In our -- for our region around here, I don't know if I was the first one that reported like that, but you know, who else I learned from, I'm listening to Bertha Moses over the -- over the old state radio.  That's -- that's the ones we started off with. 

MARLA:  Yeah. 

ROSE:  Bertha Moses.  She's something else. 

MARLA:  So you would listen to her talk to the doctors in Tanana?
 
ROSE:  Yeah.
 
MARLA:  About what was going on in Allakaket?

ROSE:  Uh-hum (affirmative).

MARLA:  And then that helped you here? 

ROSE:  Yeah.  I learned from Bertha.  I listened to her.  Skin problem or what to do about it or -- the toughest that I think we went across was skin problem.  Gee whiz sakes, we don't -- at first, gee, I don't know what to say.  It's red or its bumpy or what, I don't know what to say.  It was pretty hard.

MARLA:  Yeah. 

ROSE:  For me, it was, I don't know if it was like that with the other girls.  I heard them other girls talk.  Smart girls, downriver, up the river, I heard them talk.  Smart girls.

But see, I grew up in the camp.  And I didn't go to school.  When I now in Anchorage, I'm -- I'm in class, I'm in class with everybody from the Yukon River and from young ladies from around the Coast, I know that all of them been through some kind of school while they were kids.  Getting educated.  And -- but not me.  I only know how to read, that's all. 

I don't even know what lots of words means.  I have to look in dictionary because I can't -- I can't -- I can't tackle it unless I -- I look in dictionary.
 
And then they give us medical -- medical dictionary, too.  Gee whiz, long words, I can't even pronounce those words. 

MARLA:  Not many people can.
 
ROSE:  Yeah.  Gee whiz sakes.  It was pretty hard to pronounce those big words, you know.  But anyway, it happened and it happened.  I think all of us, all of us, we tackled what we were doing.  But it was pretty doggone interesting.