Back in Bethel

If you're wondering what Bethel, Alaska looks like without all that ice and snow, look no further:  There is grass!  Trees with green leaves!  Daylight until 1 am!  And lots & lots of rain which produces copious amounts of mud.  I forgot my umbrella, but I did arrive equipped with an insanely cheery pair of child-size "fireman style" rubber boots:

I'm staying at one of the hospital-owned apartments next door to the jail (I will not lie--the barbed wire fence does give off penitentiary vibes).  So far, the prisoners have been extremely quiet and neighborly.  There is a super muddy trail leading from the apartments straight to the hospital that can be traversed in less than 5 minutes.  It's hard to believe that I can squeeze through the narrow gap between two barbed wire fences--wearing all my waterproof gear and my internal frame pack--without setting off several alarms and alerting the Alaska State Troopers.

Meanwhile, back on the inpatient wards, I feel like I'm swimming in jello,  and everything I do is soooo slow and cumbersome.  I have a large service of patients who have been here forever, many with tricky family dynamics that must be navigated carefully.  The RMT calls are as crazy as I remembered, and today's top prize goes to a call about a 79-yr-old woman who had chest pain, then dramatically collapsed in the doorway of the village clinic, then went into bradycardia with a pulse of 40 followed by a seizure after receiving one dose of nitroglycerin.  After being medevac'd to the ER, she was found to have a very low hemoglobin of 6!  Oh Bethel, how I've missed you...