ER and Ultrasound in Fairbanks

As I said in the last blog, as soon as we got to Fairbanks, we took off for the ER in the Fairbanks Hospital, pretty easy to find

They are remodeling the hospital and they had just opened the first wing of the ER. which is beautiful, and very state of the art, I could not take any pictures inside the rooms because of patient confidentiality, but they said they would email me some they use for promotion, will show you then





Inside the first wing of the ER they have 22 individual rooms for ER patients, and it's only half of ER
each one looks like something out of Dr House,
big, lots of comfortable chairs,
one chair makes into a toilet for the patient's needs,
sliding glass doors with curtains,
beautiful pastels colors,
even the medical supply carts are pastel colored,
not Sears Red tool boxes




This man is the receptionist and he said he would send me the pictures for sure

The ER has only been open for a month, since being remodeled, my brother said they must have a statue of Senator Steven's here somewhere, that's the guy who was trying to get a bridge to an island in Alaska, can you imagine that many ER rooms, and not beds with sheets inbetween them

The ER Doctor sent me to get an ultrasound of my leg to rule out a blood clot, so today I went to the imaging clinic which is part of the hospital and it is brand new too

Looks like an office building doesn't it, but it's the lab for the hospital

Beautiful hanging basket, it's loving that all day and night sun, did you know that Fairbanks has the most diverse weather of anywhere in the world, can be in the 90's in the summer and then in the minus 30's in the winter, and the weather can change in a minute, it thundered and lightening on us today

These are the registration rooms for the Imaging Clinic, there must be a dozen of them, very private, they didn't even want me to bring out my ID at the front desk

The waiting room

I really liked some of the art work on the walls

Once inside the ultrasound room, what a surprise a comfortable chair to sit and take your shoes off, not an orange plastic thing, pure class

This is their ultrasound machine, looked brand new to me, but what do I know

The Technician's chair, never seen one like this before

Everything in the your own private bathroom is touch free, the lights come on and go off when you open the door, the door locks by leaning against a button, pretty cool

I even liked the floor colors

This is the technician, she probed and prodded the major vein in my leg for a good hour, took pictures, listened to the blood flow, then she called a doctor in and she did the same thing, around the area where the bruising started, the problem was that there was so much blood still there that they couldn't see the blood vessel, so they kept prodding until they figured they were not going to see it, they said that my major artery above the site was good and below was good so they were pretty sure that I was blood clot free, couldn't tell what happened to cause this, but were very impressed with the amount of bleeding, and bruising

Since they prodded so long on my leg it hurt worse than it had at any time previous to this, so Cindy tried to soothe my soul with fast food, didn't work, hurt like heck and we got in a few tourist things and then I went back to RV and went to bed

Huge McDonalds, and a place to plug in your car while eating in the winter, you know we hadn't seen a McDonald's or anything other than A &W since we left Montana

This is part of University of Alaska's Big Animal Research Program

These Muskox roamed all over Alaska, became extinct and then they had to reintroduce them from Iceland

They've got hair that grows to 3 feet and then softer than mohair underneath that, they are spinning things out of muskox hair

One of the Cemeteries in Fairbanks that we ran in to

Nice Cemetery

An internal flame memorial

Creamer's Field is next to a dairy and has been used by migrating birds for years, now it's a sancutary

These are cranes in the distance, we were told that the mosquitoes are bad in the spring and early summer but that when the migrating birds get there they eat the mosquitoes, must be true, we haven't been bothered by them at all and we are next to a river

We saw this in the Walmart parking lot along side of other RV's, have seen an article about this vehicle and how it can go anywhere, kind of overkill for the Alaskan roads, but maybe not

You can even plug in if you are shopping at Walmart

Walmart has even marked the RV spaces

Just so you know, all that money that you spent on oil is going to a very nice information booth on the pipeline, nice of them, don't you think

When we leave here, on Sunday we are going to Denali, Anchorage and then to the end of the pipeline in Valdez

5 years ago we were here and went within 80 miles of Prudhoe Bay, and then we ran out of time, so we want to see the other end of it

Let's Talk PIGS

I think this is the coolest "retired" pig I've seen, I can just imagine it spinning around and scrapping the wax off the inside of the pipeline, I had forgotten that oil had wax in it

The things at the top are like radiator fins and dissapate the heat of the oil so that it doesn't melt the permafrost, the pipeline lays in these cradles that move so that when the ground moves it doesn't break the pipeline, just moves the cradles

I thought that the pipeline couldn't be in the tundra to protect the animals and their natural habitat, but really it can't be in the tundra because it wouldn't last a season with the permafrost melting and heaving upward, we've seen enough road heaves to make believers out of us

And wouldn't you know, The Princess is here

I read that Fairbanks was named after a Senator from Ohio, thought that was very strange so I looked Senator Charles Fairbanks up in google, he was also the Vice President to Theodore Roosevelt, and almost was Vice President again, he was very good friends with President McKinley, (the McKinley, who after he died they changed the name of the largest mountain in North America from Denali to Mount McKinley, now they changed it back, guess there's hope for Reagan Airport) anyway, Fairbanks was appointed to a committee that worked out the borders between Canada and Alaska, he had said that he wouldn't give a way even an inch of Alaska to anyone, supposedly they named the city after him because he said that, I think the same people who changed the name of Denali to McKinley also named a small town in Alaska after a Senator from Ohio