Medical Care in the Village

Medical care in the village can get tricky.  We do not have a hospital or emergency room or even an urgent care facility.  We have a clinic with a very thorough and fantastic nurse (I am definitely a huge fan of his).  But, he is obviously limited in what he can do in Nanwalek.  If you need emergency care, you have to fly out.  That can get tricky, though.  If it's too windy, the planes can't come regardless of your medical condition.  Then, we are also limited by daylight.  If it is dark, they can't come either.  During this time of year, the first plane typically comes in around 9:30 or 10:00 in the morning and the last one typically leaves Nanwalek at 3:30 and absolutely no later than 4:20 under any conditions.  That's not a huge window.

That window decided to make my life a little complicated this weekend.  Saturday about noon, my belly started hurting enough to make me quite uncomfortable, but not enough to be alarmed.  As the day progressed into evening, however, it got progressively more painful.  By 6:00, Mike was googling symptoms for appendicitis (he never googles symptoms, so that itself is a cause for concern) and it got very real when we realized I had every one except the nausea and vomiting.  I also had quit eating when the pain started so I had nothing in my stomach so that missing symptom didn't make either one of us feel better.  I wasn't at the emergency room level of pain yet, but it was disconcerting to know that my window to get on a plane was closed already.  By 10:00, I probably would have gone to an emergency room if I could have and was deciding whether or not I should go to the clinic and get a medevac out.  I was feeling that badly.  Not knowing for sure what it was, though, I was hesitant to go this route.  I really didn't want to be medevaced out to find out it was something really stupid like gas.  That is my luck after all.

By 11:00 I was seriously questioning my survival.  I still did not want to be medevaced out, but was also very concerned that, if it was appendicitis, it might rupture while I was in a place with no facilities to take care of me.  Obviously, this spurred a conversation with Jesus.  "Please, God, don't let me die over here.  Like, really. [as if he doesn't know I'm serious] I can't die in Alaska.  I can't do that to my parents or my husband.  That's not okay."  So we talked some more about the faith of mustard seeds again and I struggled with how to phrase my prayer.  Obviously, I didn't want to have appendicitis, but I'm sure there are worse things.  Don't let me die is also very specific.  There is a huge expanse between healthy and happy to dead.  I didn't really like the idea of that gray area either.  So I settled with "Jesus, I trust you.  I'll be okay," and let him define okay for me.  Sometimes I may overthink things and be a little too detail oriented.  Maybe Jesus is trying to break me from this habit.  He is Lord of all.  He doesn't really need me dictating requests to him like I know best.  Who knows.  As I'm writing this, I'm thinking I was probably an idiot for not going ahead with the medevac route, but I had a good little chat with Jesus and good lesson from the experience.  So I'll say it was part of His plan and that can make me feel better about possibly being stupid.

I spent much of the night waking up, looking at the clock, and counting down the hours until the first flight in the morning.  By 3:00 Sunday morning, I was miserable enough I probably would have gone for the medevac if I hadn't already had a conversation with Jesus about trust and hadn't been half asleep.  Somewhere around 6:00 in the morning, I realized I had been doing my math wrong and had to add an extra hour into my formula the next flight.  I was very sad.  Somewhere around 8:00, I started to feel better, but not okay.  The weather was terrible, so the planes weren't flying Sunday morning.  I couldn't get out to go to the emergency room.  The pain wasn't going away, so I gave up and went up to the clinic.  They did a thorough exam and contacted a doctor in Anchorage.  Since my pain level had dropped significantly from the night before, he said there was no need for a medevac and recommended I get on the next flight out and get to the emergency room in Anchorage.  Fortunately, we were able to fly out of Nanwalek through a little lull in the winds, got flights up to Anchorage, and got to the emergency room.  I would not ordinarily be eager to fly out on a bad weather day or go to a place so soon after a major earthquake where they are still having aftershocks, but life seems to like laughing at my expense.

I won't bore you with all the details of the ER.  It's all pretty standard. Vitals, blood work, poke and prod tender places that do not appreciate poking and prodding, pee in a cup, perhaps spill some of that on my pants (that's probably not pretty standard, but sometimes you just have to learn to laugh at yourself) and wrap the process up with a ct scan.  All that to decide that I do not have appendicitis and need to follow up with a regular doctor some time and have my gall bladder looked at.  So, I guess I'm glad I didn't go the medevac route, even if it was probably stupid at the time.  I'm pretty sure my conversation with Jesus played a pretty big role in the outcome, anyway.  For the record, I am slowly feeling better.  I feel like I've had abdominal surgery even though I didn't, but I guess the pain without the surgery is better than having the pain and surgery.  The weekend was obviously full of "only in Alaskas", but there was one that was kind of cool.  We flew back from Anchorage with Johnathan Hillstrand from "Alaska's Deadliest Catch"- not worth the pain by any stretch, but still cool nonetheless.