Operation: Suture

Coming storm and we have to go straight through it

I got the awesome opportunity the other day to fly with one of the other PAs to one of our villages.  A call came into the ER that a 6 month old got a pretty deep cut on the face that was going to require stitches.  Normally the village health aide would be able to take care of this; however, this particular village didn't have a health aide.  Rather than having baby and mom medevaced to the ER, myself and one other PA got a charter flight to the baby.  We got to the airport around 3:00 with the expectation that we were going to be leaving right away.  However, in true Bethel fashion, there was a "miscommunication" and the plane wasn't going to be getting in for about an hour.  An hour came and went, and we were informed that due to a strong head wind the plane was running about 40 minutes behind!  So we waited, and waited.  Finally the plane arrived, was fueled and ready to go.  The lady at the desk asked me to stand on the scale.  I kindly let her know I didn't have any bags (we were just going there and straight back).  She smiled and said "no, I need YOU to stand on the scale".  So up onto the luggage scale I went!  I should have known then when we walked out onto the tarmac and the pilot would indicated this tiny little plane to be our ride.  With a max capacity of 4 it is by far the smallest plane I have been on.  

Yep, that's the runway ahead

That strong head wind that delayed our charter in the beginning also doubled our flight time to the village.  We landed on a dirt runway around 7:00pm in the pouring rain.

Russian Mission
one of the villages I will visit often

              We were picked up in one of the village's 3 trucks and brought to the clinic.  Although the laceration repair took us longer than we had anticipated (but really what hadn't up to this point) the cut closed up beautifully and the baby did really well.  We hopped back on the plane and made it home by 10:00. 

Alaskan Tundra - with all that water it's no
 wonder there's so many mosquitoes! 

Bethel - Home sweet home

It was such a cool experience!  For the most part the weather for the flight was very clear.  We could see for miles!  It was so strange to me to see so much land and NO human footprint!!  We flew over miles of open tundra, we even saw several moose!  The plane ride was bumpy, but not as bumpy as I thought it would be. I can't wait for my next village trip!