Rose Winkleman Transcript, Section 4

Community Health Aide Program Project Jukebox

Rose Winkleman,
Transcript Section 4

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KAREN: So why did you decide to take the job?

ROSE: Well, I told you, I thought it would be a pretty good thing to know something. Besides the money wasn't that enticing at the time. I think my first checks were probably a couple hundred bucks, you know. Learning all the stuff.

They sent me to Anchorage for training, maybe three weeks at a time. And thanks to my -- my relatives and friends over there, I had somebody to take care of the kids.

I'd take the youngest one with me because I had -- I had a son in Anchorage living that I could stay with when I was in school.

And -- but there was -- I don't remember how many sessions I took, you know. My kids remember how I had to leave them for two or three weeks at a time. Travelling all over. Lots of trips to Fairbanks. They would take us, us trainees, to different villages, and I was way up in the Arctic Circle, up at Chalkyitsik.

KAREN: Hmm.

ROSE: Past Fort Yukon. Up in the Interior. I never go the other way.

KAREN: What kind of things did they teach you in the training? Like what did you do in the village, for instance, when you went to Chal --

ROSE: Take care of sick people.

KAREN: No, when you went to Chalkyitsik, why did you go to Chalkyitsik?

ROSE: They sent us. That was part of our training session. Getting -- getting all the health aides together.

KAREN: Oh, telephone. So we were talking about what you did -- what you did in the training. So they sent you to the villages for practical experience?

ROSE: Not -- not necessarily. That was extra. For my really training, I went to Anchorage.

KAREN: Uh-hum.

ROSE: You know.

KAREN: Do you remember --

ROSE: Then it's the village's group all together went to one place out of Fairbanks, that hot springs place. Not Manley, but the close -- closest one.

KAREN: Chena, Chena Hot Springs?

ROSE: Chena Hot Springs. Spent a few days there. And just meeting together and all that.

KAREN: Uh-hum.

ROSE: But that was a little later. In the beginning, it was training, two and three-week sessions, regularly. Learning. Learning everything you had to learn.

Have you ever talked to any of these people that was in charge of health aides and how their program went and stuff?

KAREN: A little bit, but it's nice to hear it from you who was learning it.

ROSE: Yeah.

KAREN: What it was like and what you learned and what you thought about the training.

ROSE: Well, it was great. I mean, we learned something every time we went, something different.

I remember one time after I had been in there a while, I had gone over and they taught me how to pump out the stomach. Somebody take an overdose.

And this woman was -- she was on -- she was on a medication for her -- her problems, and she overdosed one time, she just took -- she took a bunch of pills. And I had just gotten back from training that -- just the few days before that, how to pump a person's stomach out.

And I was home, and in the beginning, I didn't have a clinic, but that's beside the point. I was at home and I got a call from my neighbor next door and she told me this woman had come in there kind of in a daze and looked like she was ready to pass out, and she -- she just told her that she had taken a bunch of medication.

So I went over there and I could see she was getting kind of like she was going to pass out. So I had to go over to the clinic, which was close, and bring -- bring the equipment over and I was working on her bathroom -- bathroom floor, that's where she -- that's where she wound up. So I pumped the stomach out.

Just as I was through with that, we had a -- it was a medic up on the hill there, Tatalina it was called, they had a bunch of GI's up there in the communication system up there of some kind.

And sometimes when you needed -- people needed something, they would call the medic and he would come down. So they got ahold of him. And he finally come down there. And he was -- he was putting in a line -- putting a tube in for her. I'm getting a mental block.

KAREN: Putting a line in for an IV?

ROSE: Yeah. Yeah, IV. And then -- then somebody heard that a nurse was in town that lived in McGrath, but she was out at the mine, and they had gotten a hold of her, and she would come in.

So she came and helped -- she came and helped the medic and me. We got the IV into me -- into her, and I -- I did that, too, but I was kind of nervous about doing that. And in the meantime, I called ANS and got authorized to take her in, you know.

So Judy, this was Judy Rosander, she's a registered nurse, she had gone to school. She started, to -- she was in Mount Edgecumbe and then she went up to Seattle.

Anyway, she was a registered nurse. And she helped a lot. Well, we got her in there and just as the plane landed, this woman went into convulsion. So we was lucky that -- that we got her in there. But harrowing things like that.

KAREN: Uh-hum. And so she -- she survived?

ROSE: She survived, yeah.