Willa Ashenfelter and Irene Aukongak, Part 1, Transcript Section 4

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Willa Ashenfelter and Irene Aukongak, Part 1
Transcript Section 4

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KAREN: Yeah. So both of you had your own families to raise, plus doing health aide work. How did you --

IRENE: Oh, I forgot my son. He's still living with me.

KAREN: How did you do that? How do you balance the family and being a health aide?

IRENE: When I first started with Lynn Arrington (phonetic), she had a little girl she used to take with her, so I started taking my little girl Myna. I couldn't get baby-sitters to take care of her. And when they get a little older, I just leave them at home and the family takes care of them.

WILLA: I think a lot of why I worked so long was I liked the people I was helping. I don't know. It was something I really enjoyed doing. Otherwise, I don't think I -- I don't care if people paid me a lot of money or a little money, but I really enjoyed my job.

IRENE: Coworkers are one thing, too. Good coworkers, it's important.

KAREN: So you -- you worked first in the -- starting in what year, 19 --

IRENE: '56.

KAREN: '56.

IRENE: February '56.

KAREN: And the Health Aide Program didn't --

WILLA: There was nothing. No health -- no program, no training. Not until later on.

IRENE: That came later.

WILLA: That came later. With (indiscernible).

IRENE: Yeah.

KAREN: So, well, you had your nurse training.

IRENE: Uh-hum. That helped me some. Yeah.

KAREN: So did you communicate with doctors?

IRENE: Yeah. Kotzebue.

KAREN: And how did you communicate -- did you have telephones yet?

IRENE: No. We had those little single-sideband radios from BIA school, and we had a little room to -- a little tiny room where they kept their radio and I'd have to sometimes see patients there. We didn't have clinics. We just made like home visits. And when the doctors make trips, they go in someone else's home.

KAREN: And set up a clinic in somebody's home?

IRENE: No -- yeah. Set up a little clinic in someone's home, if they okay it, you know, some -- some people are real nice. So it was -- we didn't have nothing to begin with, no clinics, nothing.

WILLA: The very first time I went on radio, Martha was telling me to go ahead and report somebody that I saw, and I was really impressed with this lady, I didn't know what in the world she was talking about, KYD.
What else did she say that I didn't -- I didn't know what in the world she was talking about.

But I called Kotzebue and I spoke with Dr. Dudley, I told him it's my very first time on the radio, to be really patient with me, but I was calling for a refill on a medication. And the medicine was phenobarbital and belladona. I had -- I think he ended up spelling it three times for me.

There was another LPN in Koyuk, too.

IRENE: Oh, Robert. Yeah.

WILLA: Yeah. And he used to use words I didn't know. And it took me awhile to understand.

IRENE: That's what we learned at Edgecumbe LPN school. Those skills.

WILLA: He would talk about hematomas, and I think the doctor then would wonder if he knew what he was talking about. But he knew. It was -- so.