First clinic day but the sewer is frozen!

 Busy, busy clinic today for both Gloria and me.  Many needs, one can only chip away and hope to reduce pain and infection.  The challenges we see are similar to what we have seen in the past in developing countries.  But, outside of the US, we do the work, clean up and move on to the next patient.  Here, working for the Department of Indian Affairs, our paperwork has paperwork.  Gloria and I are much better at the dentistry then we are with paperwork!

Hannah, our assistant is great, but we all realize she can't chairside assist, do sterilization plus all the paperwork that is required for government reimbursement.  They are flying in another assistant tomorrow from Kotzebue to do the 'admin' work.

Now, some comments on the meals!  Breakfast for the medical-side employees was caribou liver and pancakes.  They offered all I could eat but I demurred.  For lunch, our maintenance man cooked up Spam soup.  Another variation I hadn't thought of.  I did have a bowl, not bad really.  I fear, though, that the 'non-Spam' meat in the soup was leftover liver.......

Frozen sewer?  A story and a picture.  As Gloria and I walked around town after clinic yesterday, we saw what looked like AC ductwork going from house to house, the village is laced with it.  We thought, how odd to heat that way.  When we asked, we were told that this is their sewage system!  Again, due to permafrost, it, like the houses on stilts are above ground.  They are insulated and they don't depend on 'flow'.  The answer?  Suction.  They have huge suction pumps to draw the sewage.  Problems arise if it is too cold for the pumps to work.  Hence no suction and no flushing toilets!

So, without any more graphic descriptions, with all the toilets in the medical/dental clinic not flushing we finally ended up with one bucket to use.  What we used to call a 'honey pot'.  Not ideal for around 10 of us working at the clinic.  Fortunately by 6pm today, the suction was sucking again and we could flush.  Oh my.