KAREN:  So what kind of equipment was there for you to work with when you first started? 

RITA:  We had blood pressure cuffs and I remember first getting training with the, you know, the hair splints for broken legs.  We didn't have computer then, we didn't have Zoll.

KAREN:  What's Zoll? 

RITA:  The Zoll is -- have you ever heard of the AEDs that they have on the planes that you get pads or someone has a heart attack, you can turn it on and.

KAREN:  Revive them? 

RITA:  Yeah.  We have those now.  The equipment, just the health aide bag with a blood pressure cuff and thermometer.  We had the traction hair splints, backboard, that's about it. 

But today we have Telemedicine, we have Zoll, AED, we have a trauma room, which is very, very good to have.  It's a big difference.  But back then, you know, just for some reason I never thought of that the comparison, didn't have much. 

KAREN:  Did you feel like you had enough to cope with the medical cases that came in or were there times where somebody came in and you just -- you had -- you couldn't do anything? 

RITA:  Yeah.  We had one where this little kid was hit on the head with a monkey wrench or something and the brains were sticking out.  What can you do?  It was horrible.  But just have to be there.  There's nothing. 

KAREN:  How do you cope with that? 

RITA:  There were times when after something like that, we would get together in the clinic and cry on each other's shoulders if we had to, or say, oh, if we could have done this or that, maybe it would -- you know, the patient would have survived, or what could we have done to make things better. 

And that was our way of debriefing ourselves.  I think getting together and crying and we would clean up. 

And if there was anything very tragic, sometimes Norton Sound would send a debriefing team over.  I think they did that to people in Savoonga where there was a massive drowning, whole families were in the boat and they drowned.  So they sent a team over there.  I think which is -- which they really need. 

And some villages cope with a deaths and it's really important to get debriefing, to talk about what happened. 

KAREN:  Yeah, that's what I was thinking about before, too, it's different -- I know it's different in each village.  Some had a lot of tragedies.

RITA:  Uh-hum (affirmative).  

KAREN:  And trauma, and others, some it comes in spurts, and how a health aide -- a health aide, I think, would sort of be in the center of it all.

RITA:  Uh-hum (affirmative). 

KAREN:  And have something to --

RITA:  They are related to people, too.  It was really important to get them to talk about it right after.  And not, you know, put it away and not talk about it.  So it was helpful for us to get together like that.