KAREN:  Did you help deliver other babies? 

RITA:  Yeah.  I was with Willa, with other babies.  I think there was two others.  Those also went well.  It was back before they had medevacs.  And I would just have to help, you know, help Willa.  She did most of the work. 
But I was -- I always hear stories, too, of other health aides delivering in other villages where they had complication, and I just felt so lucky that we were blessed not to have any major problems. 

I think back in '73 or '74, when I first became a health aide, it was Labor Day weekend in May, and Willa took some time off to go camping.  And there was this young girl, she must have been 13 or 14, who had no prenatal care but she went into labor, and I was the only one there. 

And we had one telephone in the village and it was a pay phone.  I'm not sure if I used the pay phone or if I went on the standby radio and told them this girl is delivering, her bag of waters broke.  And they sent a plane with a nurse. 

And I was scared then because I was just young and I had never seen a -- a pregnancy before or a delivery.  And Willa's mom was there, she was the midwife then.  And that was scary for me because you know, I didn't have any kind of training or any kind of CMEs. 

KAREN:  Yeah. 

RITA:  And I felt like I was mostly a bystander, just, you know, the nurse came and she said get me this, get me that.  So that was different from later on when I -- after seeing the other deliveries. 

And there was one delivery with another health aide who was on call, she called me to go help but I wasn't feeling well, and I had to step outside to get some fresh air, and I heard the scream and went back in and the baby was born. 

So you know, everything's different.  It's just -- I was there just mostly for moral support, I think.  And it happened to be Willa's granddaughter that was born. 

KAREN:  Did you participate in these radio traffic sessions when you became a health aide?  Were they still doing that? 

RITA:  With the standby radio? 

KAREN:  With the radio, or by the time you were a health aide, they were using telephones? 

RITA:  I used a stand by radio.  And when I first became an alternate, Willa used to let me -- they started radio medical traffic one o'clock every day, and it was with the doctors, used to be from Kotzebue.  And the Kotzebue doctor had all the villages up there and all Norton Sound villages.  So White Mountain being with a W, we are at the end.  And we used to wait quite a bit sometimes. 

So I'd sit there and she -- Willa would say, why don't you just sit here and listen, you can listen to the other health aides and how they report and you can learn from it.  The doctor will ask questions and you will see what you need to prepare, what kind of questions you need to prepare for the doctor to ask. 

So I'd sit and listen, and I think it was the last two years before they stopped using the standby that I got to use it in White Mountain.  The doctor from Nome would call and because White Mountain is on the hillside and we have trees and mountains, sometimes we didn't get very good reception.  So we would have to relay to either St. Michael, Stebbins, or Gamble. 

KAREN:  Oh. 

RITA:  Sometimes they relayed for us so we would have to go through them, and then they would talk to the doctor and going back and forth.  And that was always -- it would take much longer. 

But using the radio, it used to be kind of a little difficult because you have to wait for the doctor to ask questions, then you come on and ask questions, and you talk back and forth.  But I just learned by listening.  Mostly. 

And Willa taught me the call numbers and how to report to patients.  Like we could have two or three.  And back then, you know, before training, we didn't realize that we were reporting, like, sore throats and bad colds, things that we could have been treating ourselves, but this is before training.  And we didn't know. 

KAREN:  So eventually you started treating those things yourselves? 

RITA:  Uh-hum.  By following the medical standings orders.  Yeah. 

KAREN:  And then what about when the telephone, do you remember when they started having a telephone? 

RITA:  Yeah, that was a big change.  It was a change for the better, too.  Then they started calling White Mountain, we still went alphabetical order.  So they would call us before three or four o'clock.  And it seemed easier. 
And now we still use telephones, but they also have Telemedicine for pictures if we have, it's better to describe.  And we also had a fax, we can fax the PAs, they can read it, and they ask us to import questions that we need, do you think this patient needs this or that.  And so it's a lot easier now. 

KAREN:  So do they sort of still have the radio traffic kind of thing? 

RITA:  Yeah. 

KAREN:  They still have a set time to talk to the doctor on the phone.

RITA:  They still start at one o'clock every day, and the villages that have a PA, they tell them to talk to their PA, so the doctor just calls the villages that doesn't have a PA. 

KAREN:  Okay. 

RITA:  And so they are calling us earlier now where they used to call White Mountain, you know, five o'clock, six o'clock, now they are calling us like two, three o'clock.

KAREN:  That's good.

RITA:  That way we can respond to the patients', you know, needs.