Willa Ashenfelter and Irene Aukongak, Part 1, Transcript Section 10

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Willa Ashenfelter and Irene Aukongak, Part 1
Transcript Section 10

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IRENE: You remember when we started exams here that we had to learn some -- there was a real young girl, that, you know, she always used to get real red, real bashful even to do a mannequin. And we always encouraged her, you know, she didn't have to. I guess she was just learning, you know, anatomy part of men and female. We used to have fun all right.

Remember when we were younger and learning stuff? We went through the same thing.

KAREN: How do you get over that kind of embarrassment of some of that stuff?

IRENE: You know, talking to the patient and telling them what we're going to do.

WILLA: And the more times we did it, the less it bothered us.

On the other hand, when I first started working, it was after mama was there -- was doing the penicillin shots for a while, I went in and the patient I was seeing looked at me and told me, no, I don't want to see you, I want to see your mom. I told them, mama's not working. The only one that's here is me.

He wasn't very happy but he ended up letting me give him his -- giving him his penicillin. And he didn't want me to give it to him on his butt, he said he is going to -- I'm going to do it on his arm.

IRENE: Oh, they used to dread, you know, when they have, you know, sexually transmitted stuff, we used to have to give them how many, one side cheek and the other side.

WILLA: Yeah.

IRENE: Four, four.

WILLA: And that used to be enough. Later on it was --

IRENE: They would be so scared of those shots, they had to get four on each buttock.

WILLA: But later on then we had to -- it was becoming resistant to penicillin, so we had to give more. And it was those great big, those great big -- not the bi --

IRENE: 400.

WILLA: Yeah.

IRENE: No, not 400. Yeah.

WILLA: Yeah. Those were bigger.

IRENE: And when I -- it's real hard to treat your own family. Yeah.
WILLA: It is.

IRENE: It was real hard when my little girl Myna was a baby, she started having her strep throats when she was three months old.

And doctors used to -- Kotzebue doctors used to tell me to give her penicillin, so many penicillin shots, and on the seventh day, give her Bicillin.

When I was going to first give her her shot, I thought I was doing real good, I put -- I prepared her, put her on my lap, and you know, like so, and got things ready. I cleaned her and my -- my hand went up, whew, stop. I couldn't do it. For a while, I couldn't.

And then I started thinking, gee, she's got a -- you know, she might have strep throat and you know, it could hurt her.

So I think it was the fourth time I -- after that, it got easier for me. I had tough time when I first was going to give her a shot, she was so tiny.

KAREN: Yeah.

IRENE: That was a relief when I started doing it. And then when she was six years old, I finally did a shot for her.