McGrath, the Sequel
March 9, 2022
Here I am in McGrath, after spending an extra night in Anchorage due to weather, and the main thing I was looking forward to was seeing the Iditarod teams coming through. McGrath is a major checkpoint on the race, and all the mushers have to stop here long enough to get Covid swabbed and have their vet checks, etc. Some of them will take their mandatory 24 hours rest here as well.
When I finally got to McGrath about noon the PA-C I’m here to cover for told me that all the teams had already come and gone! I was so bummed. Then when I got to my cabin (for now the same one I was in before) the local radio station said there were still some mushers in McGrath, so I drove over to the area I thought they were supposed to be in and couldn’t see anything. So I got on the internet and checked the standings, and it looks like maybe there ARE a few teams still coming through, but it was difficult to tell exactly when that update was written! By now I’m too tired to go looking, so maybe there will be a chance tomorrow.
There was a huge dump of snow here yesterday, and the visibility was too poor to allow our little 9-passenger Reeve Air plane to fly. Well, it could fly just fine—it just couldn’t land, which kind of defeats the purpose of flying to McGrath. There is definitely a LOT of snow here, and so nice and dry and fluffy! It’s a lot warmer than it was in November—it’s 19 above right now, and although it’s not supposed to get up to freezing anytime soon, the lowest low is only supposed to be minus 10. And the most wonderful thing is that there is no wind!
So far I have been able to remember all my passwords, and it
looks like I’m actually NOT going to be on call the entire time I’m here. I will also be flying out for the day to
Takotna and Nikolai, the two small villages our clinic serves, to do Pap smears
on whoever needs them.
Clinic at Takotna--transportation from air strip to clinics--snowmobile
It was fun to see the villages! Both of them have always been checkpoints on the Iditarod, but this year because of Covid Takotna decided not to allow a bunch of outside people in there; they had a death recently due to Covid.
So the update since I wrote the previous paragraphs: Saw no mushers, I’m now in a new house for itinerants, it did get to minus 20 degrees last week!
The inside of the clinic in McGrath
The newly remodeled house for itinerants (like all bush clinics, various other people rotate through during the year like behavioral health, dentist, optometrist, even a chiropracter) will help ensure that there is always a place to stay for traveling providers because the pickings for lodging are very slim in McGrath. It’s a nice 4 bedrooom (but only one bathroom!) house with all new everything inside. And all new furnishings including all the kitchen stuff, bedding, everything. But it’s still an Alaskan bush house—the light switches are not in logical places, the shower is the kind that comes in three pieces for the walls and they are not completely flush with each other OR the walls. My favorite feature is the fake window in the back door.
But it’s cozy and has a washer and dryer and it’s quiet out here. So far I have only had two roomates for one night, and then one of them was here for three more nights. She was good company and I enjoyed it, although I am happy for some solitude this weekend.
The moose are terrorizing the village; the snow is so deep and it’s hard for them to get around and find enough food out there so they follow the snowmachine trails and roads and hang out wherever they please in town. It makes for a dicey walk, so I haven’t been out walking much.
It hasn’t been busy, but I did have a call the other night at the polite hour of 9 PM, much preferable to 3 AM. It was the most atypical cardiac presentation I think I have ever seen, and I really didn’t think it was his heart, but whatever was going on it was wrong enough that my spidey senses told me to medevac him and the ER doc in Anchorage agreed. We found out the next morning that he had one cardiac artery 100% plugged and two other 75% plugged! The ER doc said he was lucky he came in when he did, so I feel good about making sure I presented the case well enough to the ER doc that he would allow me to medevac the guy in.
I have had plenty of time here to do a bunch of figuring and head scratching and running the numbers concerning my finances and what it would take to build the house I’ve dreamed of for so long, or any house for that matter. It has been shocking how much the living quarters remodel in the shop has cost so far, but even if I had saved that money and put it toward the house it wouldn’t have made enough difference to make the house feasible. My builder told me just before I left that new construction is now in the neighborhood of $300 a square foot, so even my modest little house I had planned would cost almost $400,000! Added to the debt I owe on the land, it's far above what I can afford to make payments on, especially as I reduce the amount of locum work I do. I doubt that with costs that high and me not having a steady job anymore that I can even get a construction loan.
I am so sad that I can’t build that house. I have already been living in it in my mind and picturing the whole family around the table at Christmas. The apartment in the shop that is almost done will be really nice, even at only 600 square feet, and it will be a lot more feasible to do more with the land itself if I’m not making $3000/month mortgage payments. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about the masonry heater I already bought that is sitting over on the west side with the mason that was going to put it together for me. It’s too big for the apartment, so maybe I could sell it and the mason could install it in someone else’s house. Fortunately I haven’t spent much money on things for the house; most of what I’ve spent has been on the shop and the remodel. I’m lucky to have what I have, and I don’t want to spend too much time feeling bummed out because I can’t make it be the perfect vision I had in mind. I was naive, and I didn’t do my homework well enough. But I’m still getting a brand new place to live with all new appliances!
I’m now back in Idaho and it’s thrilling to see how far the apartment has come! The painting is all done, the floor got finished today, and tomorrow they will start on the cabinets! UPDATE April 23: interior is almost done!
I still don’t know when I’ll be able to move in—much depends on the weather and the ground drying out enough to get heavy equipment in to put in the septic system, water lines, French drains and gas lines. I leave for Ireland on April 29 and will return on May 14. Next blog post from there!
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