Dn's Blog The Race 11-29-23

You may remember that in 1989 (34 years ago) I was  Editor of Missouri Medicine, the journal of organized medicine in my state. Here is my editorial from March,1989. It is one of my favorites.

Alaskan Bush Adventure VI Kotzebue 3 Addendum

Well the Public Health Service  mission report is over. My son Lee Sessions came in town for Thanksgiving week and my birthday. Lee started going to the Boundary Waters in Minnesota as a young teenager and never really came 'home' again. The lure of pristine lakes and the moving water of rivers took over. After college he took some time off and canoed the entire length of the Mississippi River from Lake Itaska in Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico. Since then he has gone on over thirty canoe expeditions to Arctic Canada and Alaska. He has gone from participant to guide. He is a master of planning and logistics. He is known as the 'Arctic Canoe Expedition Chef', famous for his meal preparations on the trips.

When he read my Alaska Bush Adventure Blogs he mentioned that in 2013 he had canoed the Noatak River in Alaska.

The Noatak River one of three rivers that end up at Kotzebue as they enter the Norton Sound. He offered these amazing images from his three week trip.

The Noatak River starts in the Brooks Range in central Alaska flowing ultimately into the Norton Sound of the Bering Sea.

Their trip began (after a winter of planning) with a float plane drop off at the headwaters of the river.

There was what Lee called 'some interesting' white water canoeing on the trip. As you can imagine maneuvering

a fully loaded canoe through white water takes skill. That's our friend Bob in the bow of the canoe.

On the trip they encountered amazing wild life. Lee's images of grizzly bears are more than exceptional, and frightening.

This image of a mother grizzly who has been catching salmon to feed her three cubs shows

something I have never seen before, her swollen breasts as she is still breast feeding.

There were many other forms of wildlife on the trip including the musk oxen. They are famous for forming a protective circle around their young.

Their canoe expedition ended at Noatak Village which was upstream and a brief charter flight from Kotzebue.

Thanks Lee for sharing your trip with us, a fitting end to my trip to Kotzebue 54 years ago.

Alaskan Bush Adventure V 11-24-23 Kotzebue 2

Kotzebue despite its rural location has an excellent hospital facility.

The patients are all children who have been diagnosed with chronic tonsillitis. They come not only from Kotzebue but from surrounding villages also.The operating room is modern. We do tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy (T&A) on all the patients. We do ten T&A's a day for three days. The first day we finish at 3:30PM; the second day at 2:00 and the third day at 1:00. I am not operating faster. Rather the team is better coordinated and pre and post op care  becomes more efficient.  The best result is that there are no postoperative bleeds. This is professionally satisfying at every level. The adventure is a success at all levels.

As you can imagine with few structures to block our view, the sunsets amazing.

That's it for Alaska Bush Adventure number 1. Satisfying even after over fifty years.

Alaskan Bush Adventure IV 11-23-23 Kotzebue 1

But it was time to catch our plane to Kotzebue.

Kotzebue gets its name from the Kotzebue Sound of the Bering Sea off the northwest coast of Akaska. The sound was named after Otto von Kotzebue, a Baltic German who explored the sound while searching for the Northwest Passage in the service of Russia in 1818.

Kotzebue is also known as Qikiqtaġruk, which means "small island" or "resembles an island" in  Iñupiaq. Owing to its location and relative size, Kotzebue served as a trading and gathering center for the various communities in the region. The Noatak, Selawik and Kobuk Rivers drain into the Kotzebue Sound near Kotzebue to form a center for transportation to points inland. In addition to people from interior villages, inhabitants of far-eastern Asia, now the Russian Far East, came to trade furs, seal-oil, hides, rifles, ammunition, and seal skins in Kotzebue. With the arrival of the whalers, traders, gold seekers, and missionaries the trading center expanded.

We arrived in Kotzebue late in the afternoon.

Kotzebue like Nome has an extensive waterfront. This wooden frame will be covered with animal hides for summer fishing.

Alaskan bush villages have a similar look. 

There are areas of houses surrounded by large fields.

And interspersed are some interesting businesses.

Alaskan Bush Adventure II 11-21-23 Nome 1

Between planes we were able to spend time in Nome, mostly around the waterfront.

 

There is a large dike protecting the town from the sea.

Nome has many houses like this, with caribou and moose racks. Note the a large fishing

 net with floats in front.

Alaskans keep as much as they can outside all year round. In the winter it disappears, covered with snow.

Near the waterfront is a small "Memorial Hospital". It has been replaced by the Norton Sound Regional Hospital which is a modern facility with 36 beds.

Alaskan Bush Adventure III 11-22-23 Nome 2

And here is our protagonist in an "Ah Shucks" pose on Main Street. It is hard to believe that this kid from La Grange,Illinois in civies is on a surgical mission for the Public Health Service (on loan from the USAF) to Nome and Kotzebue, Alaska.

And here is the rest of the team also on Main Street in Nome. Fran, the surgical nurse, is on the right and Jackie, the nurse anesthetist, on the left. The sign behind them invites us to the coming 'Dance' at Stan's Pool Hall where we will have to pay 45 cents since we don't have a 'card'. We won't be able to make it.

It is at this time that I search out and find 'Louis Green's Golden Goose' bar. I have been told to go into the bar

and ask  to see what  the local native carvers have available. I find a quiet native sitting at the bar who sells me a very nice walrus carving he has done for a very reasonable price. It is the first such carving that I have purchased - the first of many to come.

We are in Nome on an historic day. It is the day that they are laying down the sidewalk on  Main Street. What a privilege.

Several years ago I was in Nome again after a trip through the NorthWest passage and it was obvious that the aging sidewalk was in need of replacement.

Alaskan Bush Adventure II 11-21-23 Nome 1

Between planes we were able to spend time in Nome, mostly around the waterfront.

 

There is a large dike protecting the town from the sea.

Nome has many houses like this, with caribou and moose racks. Note the a large fishing

 net with floats in front.

Alaskans keep as much as they can outside all year round. In the winter it disappears, covered with snow.

Near the waterfront is a small "Memorial Hospital". It has been replaced by the Norton Sound Regional Hospital which is a modern facility with 36 beds.

Alaskan Bush Adventure I 11-20-23

Don's Blog   Alaskan Adventure I

This Thanksgiving week we will go back in time to when I was a kid doctor in Anchorage. I hope you will enjoy my memories helped along by images I took at the time. Think of it as my version of a blog stream.

It is the spring of 1968 and I am at work in St Louis in the McMillan Hospital operating room doing a long head and neck case with my mentor Dr Joe Ogura.  I get a phone call from my wife and break scrub to hear, "We're going to Anchorage!" I am about to go on active duty in the Air Force during the Viet Nam War. We are more than relieved as we have been worried about going to war - my previous Chief Resident, Bill Diehl, also in the Air Force, has spent this last year at Cam Ranh Bay, Viet Nam. We are excited and energized to go to Alaska on active duty.

I have been a Berry Plan USAF Lieutenant, then a Captain, and will soon be  a Major. I attended two weeks of Officer's Training at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas which included many hours of lectures and some nighttime adventures.  In one exercise I was carried on a stretcher by other trainees who were ten years younger.  After  the training I return to St Louis. I pack up the Suburban with Jan and our two housebroken kids, and orders in hand, drive west and then north. The trip to Anchorage takes 13 days and the boys are no longer housebroken.

We end up with three  Otolaryngologists at Elmendorf Hospital in Anchorage. This allows me, an opportunity to attend at the ANMC (Alaska Native Medical Center). The Alaska Native population has an extraordinary number of patients with ear disease in need of corrective surgery. Most of these are children. I end up volunteering, with the Elmendorf Commander's blessing, and perform three ear operations every Tuesday morning for two years. Thank you Colonel Vandenbos. Another part of this volunteering adventure includes travel to the back country, the Alaskan Bush, where the patients lived.

   Bush Trip to Nome and Kotzebue 

 

In the spring of 1969 we fly to from Anchorage to Nome and then north to Kotzebue. 

We take off from Anchorage International Airport and head north in a small plane on wheels. I fly with two nurses. One is a nurse anesthetist and the other a surgical nurse. Our plan is to do multiple tonsillectomies on  native children diagnosed with chronic tonsillitis. Leaving Anchorage we fly over the rivers and the tundra.

We fly low and can see the plentiful wildlife including a small group of caribou 

 

and even a large grizzly bear about to cross a stream.

We arrive at Nome where we will change planes to Kotzebue, where the operations will occur. 

Nome is located on the Norton Sound of the Bering Sea. It was incorporated in 1901 and was once the most populous city in Alaska. In pre-history, Nome was home to Inupiat natives. The area came to Western attention in 1898, when three Nordic-Americans discovered gold on the ocean shores of Nome, prompting the Nome gold rush. Within a year the city went from non-existent to a population of some 10,000. Offshore gold mining is still a major economic force in Nome.

Don's Blog A Mystery Solved 11-17-21

Each day I walk by this house in Ebsworth Park behind my house. It is the Russel Kraus House built by Frank Lloyd Wright. Its Usonian design is a delight to the eye and mind. 

In front of the house is a grove of persimmon trees (Diospyros Virginiana). They produce a huge number of 

persimmons each year which land on the ground (and the walkway) when ripe.

The mystery was why there was a major decrease in persimmons this year. Much fewer than normal.

We had plenty of rain until recently and the deer have never eaten them. It turns out there was a scatological

answer to our quandary. It looks like the coyotes have been eating them. These are undigested persimmon seeds

in the scat.

And the hair in the scat pshows it is coyote as coyotes  are meat eaters. It's fun to solve these problems.

"Just follow the science."

Fall at the Lake House 11-15-23

Activity at the Lake House has decreased. But the chicken is still on the roost.

There is always a wind off the lake.

And these light colored deer as seen from the kitchen window have nested down under the bird feeder.

And even in the fall there is action on Lake Aspen.

On the whole it is a time of silence. I am inquiring into the silence.

                              Silence

            There is a silence where hath been no sound, 

            There is a silence where no sound may be, 

            In the cold grave—under the deep deep sea, 

            Or in the wide desert where no life is found, 

            Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound;

      No voice is hush'd—no life treads silently, 

      But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free, 

      That never spoke, over the idle ground:

      But in green ruins, in the desolate walls 

Of antique palaces, where Man hath been, 

Though the dun fox, or wild hyena, calls, 

And owls, that flit continually between, 

Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan, 

There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone. 

    Thomas Hood

'Silence' by Thomas Hood describes the ways in which Silence exists in the world and the places that one can find it.  The form of 'Silence' is described as follows. It is a fourteen line, Petrarchan, or Italian, sonnet. The sonnet is divided into two sections, the first is made up of eight lines, referred to as an octave, and the second made up of six lines, a sestet. The octave follows a standard rhyming pattern of ABBAABBA while the sestet follows a scheme of CDCDEE, neither standard nor unusual for a sonnet of this kind. 

The separation between the first and second half is comprised of a turn or a volta. This turn provides a beginning and an end to the problem or story. It may also be an answer to a question. In this case, the speaker is expanding on the concept of Silence and providing a contrasting example to those in the first half. (Wikipedia)

Another day I will share an analysis.