wildlife encounters

So I thought I'd share a call that was received at the health department. (Every time there is a suspected rabies contact the public can call in to this hotline that the public health nurses take turns answering.) Earlier this week they received a call from a woman who was out walking her dog in Eagle River (a suburb of Anchorage), when she was shocked by a sharp pain to the buttocks. It turned out that a mom grizzly bear was out walking with her cubs and she decided it would be fun to take a nip. (This story reminds me of grandma's encounter with the dog.) So they were calling in to see whether or not she was at risk for rabies.

Being that the only other news in Alaska is the corrupt government officials, the lady's story made it onto the front page of the newspaper. And no, she didn't need to get a rabies vaccine.

By the way, I had my first moose-in-the-city encounter the other day. I was hopping in my car to go to swimming and the next door neighbors had three moose chilling out in their yard nibbling on a tree. It was quite a shock to see. I think it was a mom and two calves.

Perhaps I was spoiled with all the nice Seattle weather

My weekend in Seattle was great! We had nice warm weather--perfect for a corn maze and it was fun to see everyone. Upon returning to Anchorage, my system was in for a little shock. It finally snowed! So, after I returned to my car I spent the next 10 minutes scraping off all of the snow and ice that had accumulated on the car (the only problem is that with the explorer I can't reach to the center of the car so about a food of the windshield always remains icy.)

Today at work I went on a little field trip, which was pretty interesting. We got to tour the PICU at Providence hospital. It was pretty neat, because all of the walls, including ceilings, were painted with murals of Alaskan scenery. Each wing had a different theme. My favorite was the underwater wing where the ceiling had the bottom of a kayak and a bunch of fish.

We also heard about a number of the patients there. This one infant was in an iron lung. (At an urban hospital they would have simply put him on a ventilator and sent him home until his lungs matured enough to breath on his own, however, because he lives in the bush, where electricity isn't predictable, he was kept in this archaic bubble.) From what I could tell his family has returned home to their village and he has been living in the contraption for the last 6 months of his life. Medicaid has run out so the hospital is keeping him there out-of-pocket. There are so many issues in rural health care that you'd never think about when serving an urban population.

Happy Alaska Day!

I don't have anything exciting to report...except that today is Alaska Day. All state workers got the day off to celebrate the state joining the union. The day seemed a little less exciting than the celebrations of statehood in Ecuador, however: no week long parties or party buses cruising the streets. I, perhaps not yet a true Alaskan, went in to work so that I could squirrel away my day off for a long, 4-day weekend. I found a cheap red eye Saturday morning so, I'm headed to Seattle through Tuesday. Yay!

Today I registered to vote in Alaska. I'm thinking that this red state needs a little more help than King county. Today I also learned on the internet that the names Emily and Hannah are top baby names in red states, while Sarah and Katherine are more popular among the democrats. You can learn a lot while you're bored at work.

Watch out Yarn Harlot!

This weekend has been pretty low key (read: boring). But I did manage to finish the hats that I was making for the Westfahl kids. They're pretty cute if I do say so myself, although a true yarn harlot may be able to note a few mistakes. If it were socially acceptable perhaps I'd make myself a larger version to wear around the office.

I registered for the 1/2 marathon walk today. Fortunately for me, with my car on the fritz I've had lot's of training walking from place to place. It should be pretty fun. So far Haru, Ruta and I are doing it. I'm thinking we should pull together some sort of costume to wear. We'll go by H.E.R. or if we're able to talk Sarah and Katie into doing, SHERK sounds pretty cool.

I drove with Meghan to drop off the recycling and it was snowing quite a bit over there. But, still no snow on the west side of town. The weather reporter was complaining that the weather gods mistook Anchorage for Seattle, because it's been pretty rainy all weekend. Why does Seattle get such a bad wrap?

Moose Spotting

Neil came up this weekend and we actually had some pretty great weather. It's getting cold here (upper 30's), but we had some nice rain-free days, which were perfect for hiking. On Sunday we hiked along Turnigan Arm along the coast. This was the first I'd seen snow at sea level. It was a pretty mild hike, although Neil managed to get thoroughly covered in mud after slipping and getting then getting his foot stuck in a big mud hole.

Later that night we went out to see Ratatoui at the Bear Tooth. It's a pretty cool set up where you order your food and then they have servers who hunt you down in the dark with flash lights during the movie to deliver the food. So we had burritos and shared a huge piece of mud pie during the movie.

On Monday we went on another hike near flat top, to look for moose. We saw quite a few from afar (I had to refrain from doing my moose call--because apparently they're in rut right now and will charge you!) But then on the way out of the parking lot we were slowed down by all of these cars pulled off to the side of the road. A bunch of tourists, a wildlife photographer, and a photographer from the Anchorage Daily News were all snapping shots of a bull moose that was about 10 yards from the side of the road. It was pretty cool. Here is the link to the front page of the news paper with the picture. Unfortunately we didn't make it in the shot. www.adn.com

A day in the life of an epidemiologist

So one of the competencies that I have to cover for my fellowship is to participate in an outbreak investigation. The only training we've had for conducting an outbreak investigation has been related to food born illnesses at picnics or the county fair.

I've started attending the public health nurses' debriefing meetings twice a week to start getting a feel for the types of infectious disease reports they get, and hopefully, get in on an outbreak investigation.

Of course, I should have suspected that in Alaska things would be a little more interesting. First they were talking about this case of rabies in one of the villages. It was pretty entertaining listening to the nurse talk about the guy who decided to personally kill 9 dogs, 1 goat, a cat and a fox, as a result of a potential exposure.

Then of course there was the botulism poisoning due to eating seal blubber. And the many many tuberculosis cases. Apparently tb is really prevalent here, especially in the bush. It seemed pretty interesting.

Happy Birthday Bradford!

Today is the big chief's birthday. It is also the day I became a resident of Alaska. I now have my license and plates. And you should be pleased to know that my license is actually a good picture. I'm on my way to collecting the PFD, which is the oil dividend that all Alaskans collect each year. And now as an Alaskan I can call attention to the flaws in our state government. So, the other day the governor was complaining about on the nightly news about congressman (from the lower 48) who was trying to pass a law that would make it illegal for people to shoot at wolves from helicopters. Governor Palin said that the killing of the wolves was justified because the wolves kill the moose. Okay fine. We like moose. But apparently not too much, because they also announced this same week that they are opening up the area to moose hunting. They hope to kill off at least 30 moose, because there are too many. Does any one else find something wrong with this story???