Living in Alaska - Life in the Last Frontier

( Don’t worry, all is OK!)

I haven’t felt 100% since getting home from Madison. I was getting daily headaches (some were migraine intensity), and just not feeling up to par. This is totally not normal for me, as I’ve always been a healthy woman. Some of my friends suggested that I picked up a bug while flying, since that happens to quite a few people. I thought maybe I was dehydrated, so I upped my intake of water.

Just when the headaches began subsiding (around the 15th), I felt the beginnings of a UTI (Urinary Tract Infection) start. This is also something I haven’t had to deal with on a regular basis. In the past, a few doses of AZO and gallons of cranberry juice have made things all better.

On Friday, I had errands to run, so I loaded Sedona into the car and made my loop through Fairbanks taking care of business. We stopped at Creamers Field for a walk, and after only a short distance, my back began aching, and the pain radiated around my entire mid-section. I couldn’t even finish my errands; I just wanted to go home and get into bed with a heating pad. (It also didn’t help that I had some young soldier with road rage shadow me onto Post, bullying me with his big truck! I’ll tell that story when I finish this one)

When I got home, I immediately lay down with my heating pad and took a few tylenol to take the edge off the pain. I literally felt like someone had kicked me in the kidneys.  I dialed the appointment line at BACH (Bassett Army Community Hospital) to see if I could get an appointment - knowing the odds were slim to none. They have this system where they ‘open the books’ for appointments on a certain day each month. If you don’t call on that day and make your appointment, they all fill up. You can try again the following month, if you’re not seriously ill or dead by then. So, of course there were no appointments available, and I was instructed to call on Monday morning (tomorrow) to see if there were any cancellations.

Early on Saturday morning (2am) I woke up in severe pain.  I was also running a fever.  I have a high tolerance to pain, but when it’s bad enough to make me cry, Steve knows I’m suffering.  I put up with it quietly for about an hour, but then finally woke Steve and told him I was hurting, and when he saw I was also feverish, he told me to get dressed because we were going to the Emergency Room.  I didn’t protest.

As luck would have it, there was no one in the ER at 4am, so I was taken back immediately.  After they diagnosed me,  I was given antibiotics, which kicked in within hours of my first dose and made me feel measurably better.

I felt so terrible for using the ER for care. I’ve always thought of the ER as a “life or death” situation, and not as something to be used for basic illness. I apologized to the staff, but they told me there was nothing to be sorry about - that most of the people they see in the ER are just folks who are sick with colds or flu, or kids with earaches, etc - because it’s pretty much impossible to get a doctor’s appointment when you need to be seen promptly.

I’ve had military friends complain about the medical system here, and many have told me that they don’t even bother to try to get an appointment when their kids are sick - they just take them to the ER.  I can see why now.

I have nothing but good to say about the care I received. The staff early on Saturday morning was wonderful. The doctor was kind and efficient, the young woman who took blood from me (I hate needles!) was gentle, and the young man who took my vitals when I arrived had a sense of humor.  But if I could have gotten a ‘regular’ appointment, I would have toughed it out a few more hours so as not to utilize the ER.

Today, the abdominal pain has lessened significantly, but my back still aches. I’ve spent the day on the sofa with my heating pad. Steve had to work today, but was home yesterday taking good care of me. I hope I’m back to my normal self by Christmas.

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Now for my story about the guy with road rage: I was on my way home from errands and had to make a left turn onto another road. This intersection is notorious for being a challenge to make a turn, because the oncoming traffic can be really heavy, and there isn’t a traffic light. In fact, it’s one of the intersections in town where fender benders occur on a fairly regular basis.  Icy intersections add another challenge.

I waited for a while before there was a break in the traffic. A few hundred yards away - in the oncoming lane - was a black pickup truck, perched high on those fat oversize tires.  He had his right turn signal on, so he was turning onto the same street I was. He slowed down considerably, and I interpreted that to mean he was letting me go.  So I went.

The next thing I know, he guns the gas and comes at me blaring his horn non-stop.  I made the turn safely and stopped at the next traffic light. He came up behind me - within inches of my back bumper - and began doing what my brothers called “brake stands”. He’d keep his foot on the brake, but rev his engine really loud. He also turned on his high-beam lights - which were shining in my back window - and kept flashing them.

When the light changed, I drove through the intersection towards Fort Wainwright, maintaining the speed limit because of a school zone. He hugged my rear bumper - mere INCHES at times - the entire way.

When I finally got to the guard shack, the lady checking IDs was a familiar face. She always has a smile and a kind word for me when I come onto post. We exchanged pleasantries, and she asked me how I was. I told her I was fine, but that the guy behind me had serious anger management issues and had harassed me for several miles.  She told me she’d detain the guy long enough to give me a head start. She kept him busy with chitchat for a few minutes and I lost sight of him in my rear view mirror.

He eventually caught up to me, and again rode my bumper. I turned right, he shadowed me. The next intersection was where the MP station is. I made a right towards the MPs. He followed! Then I turned into the MP parking lot, and he made a quick U-Turn and drove in the opposite direction! I guess he lost his nerve when he saw I was leading him to the police station.

I didn’t have a chance to get his license number, because I couldn’t see it out my back window while he hugged my bumper. But I would recognize that truck anywhere, and I know what direction he went in (barracks). I told Steve what happened, and he’s livid. Steve wants to look for his truck and file a report with the MPs. I don’t believe for a minute that his behavior was an isolated incident. My bet is that he’s done this before. I hope he’s never caused an accident.  So much for Christmas spirit.

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Our mailbox has been flooded with holiday cards and packages over the last several weeks. I love this time of year for all the goodies I find! Yesterday, the postman brought a familiar package from my friend Michele - the 2008 White House Ornament. This is the 11th ornament she has sent us from the collection, and it’s stunning! Here’s a photo I took of it in the box. The photo doesn’t do it any justice!

Thank you so much, Michele, James, Maddie and Josie!!!! It will join the others on our Christmas tree. What a beautiful addition! Here’s information about the ornament from the website:

This official White House ornament honors the twenty-third president of the United States, President Benjamin Harrison (1833-1901). Inaugurated 100 years after George Washington, Harrison became a centennial president and served one term. This ornament is a glimpse of the first Christmas tree ever to have been documented in The White House.

The Christmas tree is full of white streams and garland while decorated with many gorgeous toys and treats. At the foot of the Christmas tree there are presents for all of President Harrison’s grandchildren; Benjamin, Mary, and Marthena. Benjamin received a grand wooden sled and toy train while Mary found a tricycle and friendly doll. Marthena received her dollhouse while a giant Santa Claus completes the season’s holiday cheer.

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Today - Winter Solstice - marked the shortest day of the year. Today the sun rose at 10:56am and set at 2:40pm - for a total of 3 hours and 44 minutes of day. The sun made a very low arc along the horizon while it was up.

This composite photo was taken on Winter Solstice 2005 by Todd Paris, a local photographer at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He won third place in the University Photographers Association of America Monthly Photo Contest in November 2005 for this photo:

Starting tomorrow, we will begin getting our light back. Only 17 seconds tomorrow, but every little bit helps! Happy Solstice from Latitude 65!

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We’ve been conversing with Kayla via phone and email since she contacted Steve earlier this week. She’s sent us some more photos of Colt, as well as a few more of herself.  Steve and she have talked for hours, catching up on years and years of each others lives. It is wonderful to see Steve so happy! We’re hoping that she’ll be able to visit sometime in the upcoming year.

Speaking of visitors, we might also be showing off this great state to Steve’s newly-found sister Julie and her partner (I wrote about Julie in a gratitude entry on November 22nd).  We’re hoping that we win the Denali Road Lottery this year, and that they can come up and drive into the park with us.  Denali Park is planning to accept lottery entries a month early this year, so winners can be notified earlier. It will still be held in mid-September though.

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Only about a month till “Hula Time”!  We’re ready to go now! I just hope we’re not faced with the same weather problems that are going on right now, due to storms all over the country.

I talked to Brandon today and he told me that it’s -1F in Madison with wind chills of -21F, and they just had about a foot of snow dump on them - adding to the snow they had from the last storm.  BRRRRR! I keep telling them to move to Alaska where it’s warmer and there’s no wind! *grin*

It’s currently -22F here in North Pole, but it’s a dry cold. *giggle*

If I’m feeling better, I’d like to go out and take photos of the many Christmas lights in town and in the neighborhoods. Perhaps we’ll do that on Christmas Eve. I hope to write again before Christmas, but if I don’t, I wanted to share these lovely quotations:

Christmas… that magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so intangible that it is like a fragrance. It may weave a spell of nostalgia. Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance — a day in which we think of everything we have ever loved. ~Augusta E. Rundel

Let us remember that the Christmas heart is a giving heart, a wide open heart that thinks of others first. The birth of the baby Jesus stands as the most significant event in all history, because it has meant the pouring into a sick world of the healing medicine of love which has transformed all manner of hearts for almost two thousand years. Underneath all the bulging bundles is this beating Christmas heart.
~George Mathew Adams

Until next time…