Alaska Pulse Monthly

Alaska

PULSE

FREE March 2020 Vol. 1, No. 3

MONTHLY

Listen to Kikkan Cross-country skiing is good for you

Fairbanks ‘Ninja Mom’ tackles another obstacle

Homer apples have a bushel full of health benefits

Recovery is music to Anchorage singer’s ears

Watch the speed limit: When baby comes early

Teens ‘Not Buying It’ when it comes to tobacco

The buzz on the best electric toothbrush for kids

March is National Athletic Training Month!

Celebrating the licensed Athletic Trainers of Foundation Health Partners and the FHP providers who work closely with them to ensure an exemplary level of care.

Dr. Cary Keller and his team brought the first Athletic Trainers to Fairbanks more than 30 years ago in an effort to ensure that athletes receive the best care possible. Dr. Keller and his team still provides support to Alaska’s athletes through outreach services.

You will see them on location caring for: The UAF Nanook Hockey Team • Northstar Ballet The Alaska Goldpanners Baseball Team • Alaska Smokejumpers The Fairbanks Ice Dogs • Monroe High School These practitioners provide care as well as education to parents, athletes and coaches to help keep them safe and performing at the top of their game.

Thank you for all that you do.

Athletic Trainers: Providers: Emily Hutson • Jim Kimball Cary S. Keller, MD, FACSM • Grayson Westfall, MD Christopher Dean • Heidi Watkins Matt Muramoto, DO • Todd Capistrant, DO Vicki Ketchum • Heidi Ritchie Robert Wood, PA-C • Nicolle Hendrix PA-C

Appointments available by calling (907) 451-6561 HOURS: Monday - Friday: 8:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

INSIDE Our mission

Helping Alaskans to live a healthy and satisfying life in the Last Frontier by hearing from their fellow Alaskans, from Alaska health experts and by sharing their own stories.

March 2020 Vol. 1, No. 3

Alaska People

About Alaska Pulse Alaska Pulse is a monthly magazine focusing on health in the Far North and distributed around Fairbanks and Anchorage. We’ll share stories from around the state about how people stay healthy. Learn from experts in different medical fields on ways to improve, or maybe just maintain, your health. We’ll hear personal stories about people’s triumphs over different health adversities. Alaska Pulse is a community publication, so every issue is sure to hold a variety of perspectives.

Alaska Pulse is a publication of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner LLC. 200 N. Cushman St. Fairbanks AK 99707 Publisher Richard E. Harris Advertising

advertising@AlaskaPulse.com

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Editor Rod Boyce editor@AlaskaPulse.com 459-7585 Design Julie Stricker jstricker@AlaskaPulse.com 459-7532

Kikkan Randall wants her skiing success to encourage others to stay active.

UAF professor develops homebased DNA test for online genetics class.

Heart problems don’t get this Fairbanks Ninja Mom, aka Christi Hannah, down.

Anchorage singer Blaze Bell thriving in recovery and reaching out to help others.

By Alistair Gardiner Page 6

By Marissa Carl-Acosta Page 18

By Kyrie Long Page 20

By Aliza Sherman Page 30

Cross-country skiing is one of the best workouts you can get, burning lots of calories

Interior students are working to improve their communities through STEM contest.

By Alistair Gardiner Page 4

By Kyrie Long Page 13

Fairbanks Native Association’s Gateway to Recovery saves lives.

By Diana Campbell Page 26

Hey baby, what’s your rush? Alaska moms tell their stories of the babies that couldn’t wait.

By Kris Capps Page 34

Features HEALTH SENSE: Heidi Hedberg on taking small steps for big changes ..........................................10 Run like a gorilla! Fun ways to help kids stay active and fit ..............................................................11 Not Buying It: Teens speak out against tobacco ...................................................................................... 12 Salcha first responders honored ....................................................................................................................15 St. Patrick’s Day word search ............................................................................................................................16 HEALTH SENSE: Sara Patterson on advance health care directives ..................................................17 HEALTH SENSE: Dr. Evan Wheeler on kids’ power toothbrushes ........................................................29 Home(r)-grown apples a healthy treat on the Kenai Peninsula ........................................................37

ON THE COVER Kikkan Randall competes at Birch Hill Recreation Area in 2017.

Eric Engman photo

AlaskaPulse.com — March 2020 — ALASKA PULSE MONTHLY

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Is cross-country skiing

the ultimate workout?

By Alistair Gardiner

alaska pulse monthly

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uring the winter in Alaska, it can be hard to find ways to keep fit. The weather is often bad, daylight hours are scant. You’ve probably spent the past several months feeling like it’s best to just throw another log in the wood stove and stay inside.

But now March is upon us; temperatures have warmed, the days are longer, spring is just around the corner. Yet in many parts of the state, there’s still snow on the ground, making it a good time of the year to try an iconic pastime that’s 4

favored by many an Alaskan: cross-country skiing.

If you need more convincing, here’s a juicy factoid: Cross-country skiers burn more calories than any other athlete.

Big health benefits

Yes, it’s true — cross-country skiing burns the most calories of any sport. And that’s not the only benefit of the activity, according to Dr. Corrine Leistikow, who practices family medicine in Fairbanks and who happens to be an outdoors enthusiast.

“I didn’t start skiing regularly until

ALASKA PULSE MONTHLY — March 2020 — AlaskaPulse.com

I moved here 30 years ago,” she said.

“There’s so much winter here, so it’s such a great sport to do in the wintertime, to get you outside to stay active. And we have great places to ski too.”

Originally from the Midwest, Leistikow had done some skiing before she relocated to Alaska but didn’t start regularly cross-country skiing until she moved to Fairbanks. She enjoys the social aspects of skiing in a group and noted that it’s important for mental health to find ways to get yourself outside during the winter. Most significantly, skiing is an excellent workout.

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“Skiing is wonderful because it works your whole body. A lot of sports will work either your upper body or lower body, but skiing works your arms, your legs and your core,” she said. “People say that cross-country skiers are probably the most fit people, because you’re working all of those body parts.”

Leistikow — who also hikes, bikes, snowshoes and more — said that skiing requires you to pretty much use all of your muscles: from biceps, triceps and forearms, to the core, all the way down to the quadriceps, hamstrings and calves.

“You use all the major muscle groups in your body when you cross-country ski.

And because you’re using your upper and lower body, you can build up your endurance. You can build it up better than, say

running or rowing.”

Leistikow said that, for seniors in particular, cross-country skiing can also help improve balance due to the fact that you’re constantly moving — often on uneven ground.

“Everyone’s balance gets worse when you get older,” she said. “Continuing to cross-country ski can help with your balance, which can decrease your risk of falls.”

On top of that, skiing is a low-impact activity, which means it’s gentle on your body even while you get a good workout. This means older people or people with conditions such as arthritis are still able to throw on a pair of skis and hit the trails, even if running becomes offlimits.

Heading outside

For those new to skiing, Leistikow recommends renting equipment to try it out before buying. She added that you should pay attention to whether you’re wearing the correct size boots and to make sure you dress appropriately, which may not mean what you think it does.

“You get very warm cross-country skiing. Even if it’s 10 below, I’ll just wear a fairly light jacket. My hands and feet get cold, so I’ll often need toe warmers and thick mittens,” she said. “But just know that you’re going to overheat.”

As a final note, she added that people should be aware that they’re going to burn a lot of calories. This was a point SKIING »8

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“I wanted to use my spotlight and platform to help other kids — and girls specifically — to build those healthy habits early and set goals and not be afraid to sweat.”

Olympic skier Kikkan Randall speaks to participants at the Fast and Female Champ Chat at Birch Hill in 2015.

Erin Corneliussen photo

Alaska’s Kikkan Randall a cross-country skiing legend

By Alistair Gardiner

alaska pulse monthly

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hile the physical rewards of cross-country skiing are accessible for all, only a few have pushed themselves to experience the full extent of that which skiing does for the body. Among their number is Kikkan Randall.

The Alaska-raised Randall is a champion cross-country skier, having competed in five Winter Olympics, winning 17 U.S. national titles, and making it 6

to the podium 29 times at the World Cup. Randall competed in every Winter Olympic Games between 2002-2018, winning a gold medal in the most recent Games in the Team Sprint competition.

Competing for decades hasn’t diminished her enjoyment of the activity.

These days, she likes to take her 4-yearold son out on the trails.

“I just love the feeling of skiing. I go out now, not because I have to or because my career is riding on it, but just because I love it,” she said before extolling the health benefits of the sport.

ALASKA PULSE MONTHLY — March 2020 — AlaskaPulse.com

“I think that’s one of the beauties of it.

There’s not many activities you can do that make you strong in all parts of your body and do it with very little impact.

I trained for a marathon last year and I had forgotten how hard that is on your body.”

The 37-year-old was still a toddler when she first put on a pair of skis.

“My dad started me on alpine skis when I was 1 year old. He brought home the smallest skis and boots they had in the shop,” Randall said. “I got on cross-country skis for the first time

when I was 4 or 5 years old, and my parents signed me up for the (learn-to-ski program) Anchorage Junior Nordic League.”

Randall said she didn’t immediately fall in love with crosscountry skiing. While she Nordic skied through middle school in Anchorage, she became more focused on alpine skiing as she grew up. Cross-country skiing became a weekend recreational activity.

“But I was just enjoying the people in cross country so much, I stopped alpine and got more into cross country,” she said. “I consider the serious start to my cross-country career about age 16.”

Randall said that skiing strengthens every part of your body, helps with endurance and balance. In her words, skiing helps you “get strong in all these really cool ways.”

“I love the fact that you’re outside.

You’re covering all this ground as you go, which I appreciate a lot more than staring at a pool bottom the whole time,” she said. “That’s another thing I love about the sport: The different ways we would train are pretty diverse. We spent some time on rollerskis — they’re a little bit shorter. Those are great for mimicking the movements. The only thing is they

first American woman to win a medal in cross country skiing at the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships; in 2013 she and Jessica Diggins became the first American women to win a gold medal in the team sprint. The pair went on to win the first ever cross-country skiing gold medal for the United States at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.

“When I was in high school, no American woman had ever been top 10 in the Olympics,” Randall said. “I considered it an open frontier — like, maybe I could be the first.”

Randall now likes to dedicate some of her time to organizations and nonprofits, like Healthy Futures and Fast And Female, the latter of which is focused on empowering young women ages 9-19 through sports.

“Early on in my career I recognized the opportunity that, as an athlete, I could be a champion to young people,” Randall said. “I wanted to use my spotlight and platform to help other kids — and girls specifically — to build those healthy habits early and set goals and not be afraid to sweat.

Those habits help build an incredible foundation that allow you to be successful in anything you choose to do.

“We’ve seen that girls can really latch onto that and see themselves in these athletes,” she added.

For newcomers, Randall recommends starting with good quality gear — a pair of skis fitted for you is the best way to start.

Eric Engman photos “Go somewhere where you can start on flat ground, and just don’t have brakes.” have a little bit of patience and Beyond avoiding corners while huran open mind. It is an experience where tling along on rollerskis, Randall said you’re sliding on snow and you’re using all she would also run, cycle and mountainthese little muscles you didn’t know you bike to stay fit enough to ski. She would had. But it’s an experience that gets more weight-train twice a week and use padrewarding the more you do it,” she said. dling to help with upper body strength.

“The view from the top is always worth it.

Randall’s accomplishments go beyond Just keep at it and you’ll start to unlock all that of the average Olympian. She was of these new levels.” the first American woman to win a World Cup race and to win a World Cup Contact staff writer Alistair Gardiner at 459-7575.

Email at agardiner@AlaskaPulse.com discipline title. In 2009, she became the AlaskaPulse.com — March 2020 — ALASKA PULSE MONTHLY

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that Owen Hanley, a Fairbanks-based internal medicine doctor who also recreationally skis, couldn’t emphasize enough.

“Skiing is generally considered the sport with the highest calories burned. Rowing and swimming are probably the other two that are closest,” Hanley said, before adding that this may not be true for every individual. “It’s the same thing as swimming — some people aren’t going to burn a lot of calories swimming, if they’re not very good at swimming.”

Hanley grew up in Fairbanks and competitively cross-country skied through high school and college. While now he almost exclusively skis recreationally, he’ll occasionally do a race, like

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ALASKA PULSE MONTHLY — March 2020 — AlaskaPulse.com

the White Mountains 100, when he has time outside of work.

Much like Leistikow, Hanley spoke at length about how skiing uses all the major muscle groups and he noted how significantly skiing can improve physical endurance. But the aspect of skiing that seemed the most important to Hanley was the fact that it is a way to stay happy in the winter.

“It’s really important in Alaska to get outside in the winter.

It’s the difference between being unhappy in a place like this and really loving it here,” he said. “We have free trails — that doesn’t happen everywhere in the country.”

As Leistikow did, Hanley noted the fact that skiing is lowimpact, adding that he has a friend whose had two hip replacements and still skis regularly.

“Just the ability to pursue it lifelong,” he said, “I can’t remember a time I wasn’t skiing, because I was so young — and my dad is 75 and he’s still skiing. You may not be able to run all your life because of joint problems or whatever. But with skiing, you definitely can.”

Hanley recommended that anyone interested in getting started contact their local sports stores to see if they offer lessons or tutorials. “It’s a good way to see different parts of Alaska that are really exciting,” he said “And even somebody who’s not as fit can go out and enjoy it. it’s kind of like running — most people can pick up a pair of skis and go out skiing. It’s pretty accessible.”

Contact staff writer Alistair Gardiner at 459-7575. Email at agardiner@AlaskaPulse. com

Eric Engman photo

New to skiing? Here’s where to go Are you interested in giving cross-country skiing a go but have no idea where to start? Here is a handy list of spots that offer a new skier a pleasant first experience

ANCHORAGE

• Kincaid Park: According to Kikkan Randall, Kincaid is the main Nordic park and it has a great stadium.

• Service High School: Randall says the high school has a nice meadow, which is flat and perfect for newcomers to get their bearing.

• Hilltop Ski Area: Randall recommends the Gasline Trail as a good place to “get your balance and get the feel of it.”

FAIRBANKS

• University of Alaska Fairbanks: Dr. Owen Hanley said the groomed trails around UAF are a great place to start.

“With the groomed trail and a groomed set of tracks, you’re not going to get lost. It’s pretty easy to get started,” he said.

You can also access a wide trail network from UAF once you’ve gained some confidence.

• Creamer’s Field Migratory Waterfowl Refuge: According to Hanley, Creamer’s Field is a great place for

newcomers, because of its flatness.

JUNEAU

• Eaglecrest Ski Area: Juneau’s community-owned ski area is best-known for its ocean-view alpine slopes, but it also features 5 miles of groomed Nordic trails • Mendenhall Glacier, Lake and Campground: These areas have flat terrain and trails that suit all levels of ability.

Views include ponds, Mendenhall Lake and the glacier

PALMER

• Government Peak Recreation Area: In the past few years, some new trails have been built in the area, which, according to Randall, are “nice and mellow.”

SOLDOTNA

• Skyview Middle School: Randall suggests trying the trails around the school. She describes them as “pretty tough” but said they are frequently groomed.

—Alistair Gardiner

AlaskaPulse.com — March 2020 — ALASKA PULSE MONTHLY

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HEALTH SENSE

Small steps, big changes

By Heidi Hedberg

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t’s not easy for many of us to find motivation in the dead of winter when it’s cold and dark outside.

We know it’s healthy for us to go to the gym or even better to get outside for a walk or a ski, but then hibernation mode takes over. It can be really hard to put physical activity goals into practice and stick with them. One thing that can help is to start with your end goal in mind and then take small steps toward the goal.

I remember when I found out I was pregnant with my first child. I asked my friends with infants and children for all sorts of advice. From breastfeeding and sleep schedules to child care and nutrition, there was so much to consider and so many areas of parenting where I might succeed or fall short of my goals.

However, one piece of advice stuck out and has stayed with me. A friend told me to start with the end goal in mind.

How did I want to raise my child and what kind of family environment did I want to create?

In other words, what was the big picture, or my end goal? That same friend also reassured me that if I made a mistake or stepped off my path, it would be OK; I could always step back on.

This advice has stuck with me. I now apply it to almost everything I do, from parenting to eating a healthy diet, exercising and leading a balanced work and personal life. Small steps can lead to big changes.

As I reflect on motivation (or lack of it) in the dead of winter, I think about all the things I should be doing and what I really am doing. I still make poor choices from time to time, especially when life gets busy, but then I remember my goals and the small steps I can take to be healthy.

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I remind myself to take the stairs and not the elevator, to choose whole foods over processed foods, and to not overcommit to extra activities. I also remember the importance of slowing down and taking time to enjoy our kids, spouses and families. This may be one of the most important reminders of all for many of us, especially if you find yourself juggling multiple responsibilities.

These small steps have big impacts on our lives, our families and our communities.

Research shows that even small improvements to nutrition, physical activity and sleep can help reverse health challenges. Did you know, for example, that if you have prediabetes, losing 5% to 7% of your body weight if you’re overweight and getting regular physical activity can lower your chances for developing Type 2 diabetes? That means losing just 8 to 14 pounds for a 200-pound person. Regular physical activity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention webpage on diabetes, is defined as getting at least 150 minutes a week of brisk walking or a similar activity. That’s just 30 minutes a day, five days a week. You even get two guilt-free days off if at the end of a busy day your couch is calling your name and you forgo an evening walk.

Taking small steps also works to help improve the health of those who have had adverse childhood experiences.

These are traumatic events that occur in

ALASKA PULSE MONTHLY — March 2020 — AlaskaPulse.com

I remind myself to take the stairs and not the elevator, to choose whole foods over processed foods, and to not overcommit to extra activities. I also remember the importance of slowing down and taking time to enjoy our kids, spouses and families. childhood (birth to 17 years). Adverse childhood experiences are linked to poor physical and mental health outcomes.

A child who experiences one or more adverse childhood experiences is more at risk of a chronic condition and anxiety disorder and has lower life potential.

Small steps can change this path. When we take care of ourselves, we can better take care of someone else. When we are healthy, we can then make a positive impact on our families, neighborhoods and communities. Ultimately, healthier communities will lead to a healthier state.

Taking small steps will make a big difference when you have the end goal in mind. Will you join me as we do this together? What small steps can you take today that will lead to a healthier you, a healthier family and a healthier community?

Heidi Hedberg is director of the Division of Public Health in the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services.

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Tips for Raising Active Healthy & Fit Kids Children need to be active for 60 minutes on most days of the week to maintain good health and fitness. Activity can be accumulated throughout the day. Even blocks of time as short as 15 minutes or more can count towards kids’ daily activity goal.

Here are some FUN ways for kids to stay active & fit!

Have fun! Show children how much fun it is to be active Run like a gorilla.

Walk like a spider.

Hop like a bunny.

Stretch like a cat.

Have family contests: who can jump rope the longest?

Wheel barrel races Potato sack races Use parties as an opportunity to promote activity: Ice skating party Bowling party Touch football party Get up early with your children to walk the dog Do jumping jacks together after dinner Take a family walk after dinner Go on a family bike ride through the neighborhood Create sidewalk art with chalk and play hopscotch Fly a kite on a grassy field or beach Enjoy a playground at a school or a park Play Duck, Duck, Goose or London Bridge Sledding Bowling Tag Hiking Visit a swimming park Batting cages Miniature golf

Visit www.ChefSolus.com for Free online nutrition games, healthy interactive tools, fun activities, and tips!

Copyright Š Nourish Interactive, All Rights Reserved

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Teens speak out against tobacco

By Kyrie Long

Alaska Pulse Monthly

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he last decade heralded in a wave of new trends and topics, including new tobacco products and devices.

But it also brought in a new generation of teens standing against the harmful effects of nicotine and tobacco use.

Leena Robinson, a 16-year-old from Nenana, said many people in her life are addicted to tobacco and have been affected by it. She’s a part of a group called Youth Encouraging Alaskans’ Health.

“So, I decided I was going to learn facts about tobacco and what the harms were,” she said, “and so I can tell my relatives that there are many problems with tobacco and this is why.”

Now there’s a campaign in Alaska, made with teen input, to spread that message far and wide.

It’s the “Not Buying It” campaign, where the teen input helped develop messages that would resonate better with their age group.

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An urgent response

Teen use of vaping or e-cigarettes has risen so high that in December 2018 Surgeon General Jerome Adams declared it an epidemic in the U.S. Starting in summer 2019, EVALI, an acronym for “e-cigarette, or vaping, product use-associated lung illness,” swept through the United States. The state saw its first confirmed case in November, after a teenager in Southeast Alaska was hospitalized.

In late December, Congress elected to raise the age for purchasing tobacco to

ALASKA PULSE MONTHLY — March 2020 — AlaskaPulse.com

21 nationwide, and President Donald Trump signed the new restriction into law on Dec. 20. By January 2020, the president’s administration announced flavor restrictions, to include fruit and mint flavors, for cartridge-based e-cigarettes.

Alaskans were at work throughout 2019 to engage Alaska’s young people on the subject.

“This campaign was put together in part because of the increase in teen vaping use that we were seeing in public health. EVALI came along afterwards,” said Cheley Grigsby, program manager for the Alaska Tobacco Prevention and

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Control Program, a part of the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services.

One of the best practices the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention uses to reach young people is to engage them in what you’re doing, according to Grigsby.

“So with the increase of e-cigarette use over the last few years it became clear that we needed to do a better job getting the message to those that are high school age about the harms of tobacco use and e-cigarette use,” Grigsby said.

Most kids already involved in tobacco and public health messaging aren’t always the target audience, Grigsby noted, but they work with them to help “make sure we’re resonating the correct message with that target audience.”

While the Not Buying It campaign focuses on e-cigarettes, it also tackles more traditional products, like cigarettes and smokeless tobacco, according to Amanda Estes, director of client services with Northwest Strategies.

“So we really are taking on all nicotine products,” Estes said.

Northwest Strategies is the media contractor for the Tobacco Prevention and Control program, according to Estes, and is “working on messaging directly to youth about tobacco prevention efforts.”

Insight from the kids

The teens in Youth Encouraging Alaskans’ Health do a lot of tobacco prevention activities in their communities and hold a yearly summit, which is where Northwest Strategies first showed them the preliminary materials for the Not Buying It campaign in October 2018.

“From the first initial conversation we had some materials that were actually developed for an adult audience, but we wanted it run by the teens to see if it was a message that resonated with them as well,” Estes said.

Two of their initial pieces seemed to resonate with the teens, according to Estes, and they ran some messaging by them where they were able to get main themes and what media channels the kids were using. This led the creators to YouTube, Facebook, Spotify and “all TOBACCO » 14

Nenana City School students were named one of the nation’s 100 state finalists in the national Samsung STEM competition. Teacher Mindy Jacobsen stands with, left to right in back, Aine Coy, Sophie McManus, Dominic Reames and front, Sean Richard and Trentin Stone. Kris Capps photo

Interior students work to improve their communities in STEM contest

By Kris Capps

Alaska Pulse Monthly

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nterior Alaska students are looking for ways to improve their communities and maybe win some funding for their schools along the way.

Both Nenana City School and North Pole Middle School are already benefiting from their students looking into the future. Teams at both those schools are among the nation’s 100 state winners in the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow contest, chosen from among 20,000 entrants.

A handful of Nenana eighth graders are designing a patch and mobile app to help monitor student vaping and to help them quit. The North Pole sixth graders are creating a wearable device to help students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder focus in the classroom.

Both are now working on developing prototypes.

This contest, in its 10th year, challenges students in sixth through 12th grades to creatively use STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — skills to address real-world issues in their communities. Because they are

among the nation’s 100 state winners, Nenana City School and North Pole Middle School will each receive $15,000 in technology to mark the achievement.

Each school also receives a Samsung video kit for the next step of the project.

Both classes are slated to create and submit a three-minute video that showcases their project and how it addresses the issue they selected. That video could enable them to advance to the next phase of the contest and win additional prizes and educational opportunities.

In Nenana, a student-led survey revealed that 53% of sixth through 12th graders at the school have tried vaping at least once.

This team of students thinks the percentage is actually higher, because a lot of students were absent the day they conducted the survey.

AA student on the team wondered if a patch, like a nicotine patch, could be linked to an app to document usage — only this patch would detect nicotine in the body, not release a substance to help people quit smoking. Maybe the patch being created by the students would STEM » 14

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TOBACCO

Continued from 13

Teacher Anna Creamer with North Pole Middle School students left to right, Danika Dawley, Lucy Reese, and Raegan Kingry. This team is among the nation’s 100 state winners in Samsung’s national STEM contest. Courtesy Anna Creamer

STEM

Continued from 13 change color. Users could then start tracking usage and find ways to reduce use. The patch project would include links to resources helpful to anyone wanting to quit vaping. This is a tool for students or parents could use to help their students, the class said.

In North Pole, students want to help classmates who have trouble concentrating for long periods of time, ultimately affecting their academic performance.

“They did a lot of research about the issue,” teacher Anna Creamer said.

“They settled on the idea of vibration in a bracelet to help students focus.”

“The user can program it to buzz at intervals,” she added. The timing can

be determined to fit each student. The idea is that stimulus will remind the students to focus when the mind starts to wander.

Students liked this idea because it is a gentle reminder that is nonconfrontational and nonverbal. And it looks nice to wear, so it’s not obvious, she added.

The three-minute videos were due Feb. 20. Twenty national finalists were to be selected for the next phase (after this edition of Alaska Pulse Monthly went to the printer), and then five grand prize national winning teams will travel to Washington, D.C., to present their projects to members of Congress.

Public voting will determine a Community Choice winner from the 20 national finalists.

Contact staff writer Kris Capps at 459-7546. Email her at kcapps@AlaskaPulse.com

digital campaigns.”

They also got input on the logo, which Estes described as having a “fun looking feel” with vibrant colors. A Facebook group for Not Buying It went up in May, and they’ve continued reaching out to teens across the state ever since.

“We’re going to continue moving forward. There’ll be more campaign elements developed throughout this year and into the foreseeable future as this is a big issue for the state and nationally,” Estes said.

The company’s next step would be putting together a youth advisory panel and seeing where it goes after six months, Estes said, and youths will help develop campaign messaging whether it be social media, Facebook posts, digital ads or campaigns and whatever it is they’re passionate about.

Working with the kids so far has been great, Estes said.

“They’re really responsive. The group we’ve been working with, they are youth ambassadors so they are really involved in this messaging and they’re really passionate about it,” she said, adding that they’ve got some connection to tobacco that makes them want to be engaged.

Robinson, the teen from Nenana, has been a part of Youth Encouraging Alaskans’ Health for three years. Her home community of Nenana, about an hour south of Fairbanks, usually holds an annual prevention carnival where people can celebrate and have fun without engaging in substance use.

She feels pretty good about the efforts the YEAH teens.

“I think we are making a difference very slowly, but surely.”

Contact staff writer Kyrie Long at 459-7510. Email her at klong@AlaskaPulse.com

= Did you know?

According to State of Alaska statistics, smoking among high school students has declined 73%, from 36.5% in 1995 to 9.9% in 2017. In 2017 more high school students used e-cigarettes (15.7%) than smoked cigarettes. Alaska Native high school students are significantly more likely to smoke than nonNative students, although the gap has decreased considerably since 2003.

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ALASKA PULSE MONTHLY — March 2020 — AlaskaPulse.com

Salcha first responders honored

By Tim Ellis

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wo Salcha Fire and Rescue first responders were honored recently for their hard work, dedication and service to their community located along the Richardson Highway south of Fairbanks.

Ambulance crewmembers Mark Plummer and Matt Thompson, the volunteer department’s chief medic, were among 25 first responders who were recognized in November during the fourth annual No One Left Behind awards banquet in Fairbanks. The awards are given to honor exceptional law enforcement, firefighting, dispatching and emergency medical services first responders in the region.

The No One Left Behind proMark Plummer gram is conducted through a collaboration between the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District and Fairbanks Rescue Mission.

Plummer is a nine-year member of Salcha Fire and Rescue and a captain in the Operations Division. The longtime Matt Thompson Salcha resident was given a No One Left Behind Community Outreach Award for, according to his citation, “his drive to help others, his determination to make things better and his dedication to help the community.”

The citation says Plummer has served as both a trainer and mentor to newer members of the department. It also cites his service as president of Salcha Fire and Rescue’s board of directors.

Thompson also has served Salcha Fire and Rescue for nine years. He’s a fire apparatus engineer and medic with the department, and over the past six years he’s also served as Occupational Health Manager for area medical personnel.

According to his citation, “Through his knowledge and pro-

fessionalism, Mr. Thompson helps ensure fellow members are properly trained and ready for the emergency response. His passion for the job shows in all aspects of emergency response as well as his mentoring of fellow medics and the service to our community.”

Mike Rauenhorst, who helps organize the annual No One Left Behind program, says the awards are intended to both celebrate first responders’ community service and inculcate the importance of that service and good citizenship among the youths who participate in the Junior ROTC programs at North Pole and Lathrop high schools.

The JROTC students help plan and organize the annual event and handed out awards during the annual banquet like the one in November held at Ryan Middle School, said Rauenhorst, an Air Force senior aerospace science instructor at North Pole High School.

Proceeds raised through the event go to the Rescue Mission “to help provide homeless men, women and children with three hot meals, a bed to sleep in and clothing in a safe environment.”

This year’s event raised about $12,806, Rescue Mission officials said.

Tim Ellis is a freelance writer living in Delta Junction. Comments about this story?

Email editor@AlaskaPulse.com.

A

laska Pulse is a monthly magazine focusing on health in the Far North and distributed around Fairbanks and Anchorage. We’ll share stories from around the state about how people stay healthy. Learn from experts in different medical fields on ways to improve, or maybe just maintain your health. We’ll hear personal stories about people’s triumphs over different health adversities. Alaska Pulse is a community publication, so every issue is sure to hold a variety of different perspectives.

Contact editor Rod Boyce at editor@AlaskaPulse.com or 907-459-7585 to talk about it.

Alaska Pulse is a publication of The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.

200 North Cushman Street • Fairbanks AK, 99701

AlaskaPulse.com — March 2020 — ALASKA PULSE MONTHLY

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HEALTH SENSE

Consider an advance health care directive

By Sara Patterson

O

ur entire lives we are taught to plan and prepare for our future: school, college, retirement, etc. One thing that we’re we are not taught to plan or prepare for is the end of life. Discussion about death and dying is a scary topic and therefore often avoided. Yet the best time to talk about and document your health care wishes and after-death preferences is while you are healthy and of sound mind. Starting the conversation now builds a foundation and normalizes the topic.

Advance care planning is not just about old age. At any age, a medical crisis, disease or severe injury could leave you unable to make your own health care decisions. Planning for health care in the future is essential. Do you have a plan? Have you thought about who would help guide your medical decisions if it meant life or death? What kind of medical treatments would you be willing or not willing to receive?

The process of working through these questions and talking about them is called advance care planning. Advance care planning explores the kinds of decisions that you will need to make. If you choose to formalize your choices, you would do so on a document called an Advance Health Care Directive, or AHCD. We all have values and preferences that relate to health care. It’s important to think about these values and preferences, discuss them and write them down in an AHCD. Having an AHCD, also known as a living will, ensures your preferences are understood and respected in the case of a medical crisis, disease or severe injury.

There are two parts to an AHCD.

Part one allows you to name a surrogate decisionmaker, called a health care agent, to be your voice and help guide your medical decisions in the event that you’re unable to do so yourself. After choosing this person, it’s important that you get their permission to ensure they’re willing to take on that role and responsibility, if ever needed. It’s also critical to have a conversation with them about your documented health care wishes in the AHCD, this way will have an opportunity to ask questions and verify their understanding.

Part two goes into detail about your preferences for medical treatment. If you are unable to speak, it’s likely you are very ill and need treatments to prevent you from dying. These treatments are called life-support or life-prolonging treatments. Life support treatments may include cardiopulmonary resuscitation, artificial ventilation (breathing machine), artificial nutrition/hydration (tube feeding), and dialysis. If you have questions about these treatments, consult your primary care doctor.

Life-support treatments may be used when it is expected that you will recover and the treatment would therefore be temporary. Some, more serious, situations might require treatment for the rest of your life such as a breathing machine.

The topic of death and dying cannot

be ignored when you face a serious or terminal illness. It suddenly becomes necessary to discuss health care options with your loved ones and health care providers. The hardest time to start an advance care plan conversation is when you are told your time is short.

Making decisions about unknown health care situations can be difficult, and there is no right or wrong answer.

The best way to make your decisions is to base them on where you’re at in your health now and how the treatment would fit within your life goals, values and beliefs. You need to weigh the potential benefits (help) and burdens (harm) from the treatment as it relates to you. Discuss your particular illnesses and treatment options with your doctor and ask how they may help or harm you.

Planning and making decisions about life-prolonging treatments can be emotionally difficult for you and your family.

But it can also be comforting; if your loved ones ever need to make decisions on your behalf, they will know what you would want. They’ll have peace of mind, and you can feel confident that your wishes are known and understood.

If you are ready to complete an AHCD or need assistance, Foundation Health Partners offers AHCD sessions, “Your Life – Your Design.” These sessions are free, they’re open to the public and they occur quarterly.

Three sessions remain this year: Friday, April 17; Wednesday, July 15; and Wednesday, Oct. 14. All sessions are from 1 p.m. to 2: 30 p.m. in the McGown Room at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital.

For more information about “Your Life – Your Design,” please contact Sara Patterson with Foundation Health Partners Palliative Care Department at 907-4585102.

AlaskaPulse.com — March 2020 — ALASKA PULSE

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Diana Wolf, who is teaching an online version of Principles of Genetics course in spring 2020, holds part of the home DNA testing kit that will be used in the class. Photos by JR Ancheta, UAF

High-tech home study UAF hosts first online DNA sequencing class

By Marissa Carl-Acosta

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Students in UAF’s Principles of Genetics course will test dietary supplements such as these to see if their ingredients match the advertised contents.

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his spring the University of Alaska Fairbanks is providing the country’s first online class that enables students to do DNA sequencing in their home.

Principles of Genetics, a four-credit biology course, provides each student molecular genetics equipment and teach them how to sequence the contents of herbal dietary supplements to see if they actually contain the plant species listed on their labels. Based on the samples tested so far, many of them don’t.

“The results are fairly shocking,” said Diana Wolf, who has taught the course

ALASKA PULSE MONTHLY — March 2020 — AlaskaPulse.com

for 15 years and is now developing the online version. Principles of Genetics is part of UAF’s plan to offer a fully online biology degree soon.

Before deciding to provide online students with the equipment needed to prepare the samples themselves, Wolf tested online lab programs from other colleges.

“They were lame and they were frustrating,” she said, remembering one where she had to use her computer mouse to pick up a pipette graphic and put liquid in a tube. “It’s certainly not the same as doing it yourself, and it’s certainly not going to get students excited about doing science.”

The components of a home DNA test are displayed at a lab in UAF’s West Ridge Research Building.

Creating her one-of-a-kind education experience was not the easy choice. In addition to cost barriers, Wolf ’s challenge is replicating a one-on-one experience for students who are in different settings and working at different times.

To bridge any gaps, Wolf will use video and make herself easily available to students.

Even though students are not in a lab setting, mastering good lab techniques will be critical their success in the online course. Step one, learning how to properly use a pipette, requires students to share video of themselves actually doing it.

Wolf will then offer feedback to students individually, ensuring they are

ready to move on to the next step.

Wolf has also made videos of herself showcasing various lab techniques.

She will offer live video sessions throughout the semester, which students can join to work on their labs or ask questions.

Wolf and the UAF Department of Biology and Wildlife are committed to serving students who need the flexibility of online courses. Wolf expects the online version of her course will appeal to a variety of students, including those who work full-time, live out of state, serve in the military, are preparing for medical school or are interested in their own biology.

“Lab work, such as DNA sequencing,

is an extremely important part of genetics,” Wolf said. “And students are excited by the prospect of sequencing DNA on their own.”

Marissa Carl-Acosta is a communications specialist for the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

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AlaskaPulse.com — March 2020 — ALASKA PULSE MONTHLY

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Ninja mom Fairbanks athlete was flying high until heart problems struck

By Kyrie Long

Alaska Pulse Monthly

C

hristi Marie Hannah was well into training to run in multiple rigorous obstacle courses this year as a returning contestant on the “American Ninja Warrior” television show when she was unexpectedly diagnosed with ventricular tachycardia, a potentially deadly heart disorder.

Hannah is a single mother with three children who grew up in Fairbanks and now splits her year between Alaska and Iowa, her current home at this time of the year, where she coaches sports for kids and is a dental hygienist.

Hannah is the third Alaskan to be on the show, following Nick Hanson of Unalakleet and Nate DeHaan of Bethel.

The series, a spin-off of the Japanese television show “Sasuke,” has contestants compete in a timed obstacle course testing speed, strength and balance. The contestants with the most successful runs through the course move through multiple phases of the show, from city qualifiers, to city finals, to nationals, where the ultimate goal is to beat the “Mount Midoriyama” obstacle course in Las Vegas and become the next American Ninja Warrior.

Athletic fitness is paramount in the contest and working out has been a major part of Hannah’s life.

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ALASKA PULSE MONTHLY — March 2020 — AlaskaPulse.com

AlaskaPulse.com — March 2020 — ALASKA PULSE MONTHLY

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Top, Christi Hannah with her kids Emily, 11, Logan, 4, and Michael, 10. Above, a student named Trevor teaches Hannah some Alaska Native games, including the stick pull. Hannah does a handstand to show her Alaska pride. Photos courtesy of Christi Hannah

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ALASKA PULSE MONTHLY — March 2020 — AlaskaPulse.com

She would try to be in the gym at least two hours per day for four to five days per week. Even when she can’t make it, she and her children did workouts together at home. She began training for “American Ninja Warrior” while in Missouri in 2017 as a kind of half workout goal, half bet with her trainer. In 2018 she was a tester for the Minneapolis obstacle course, and in May 2019 she made her first run as a bona fide contestant, just before her 30th birthday.

Hannah made it past the Seattle/ Tacoma qualifiers last year, placing fourth out of the top five women competitors, but didn’t make it past the city finals.

She kept on training. Then everything stopped.

A sudden change of plans

“Two months ago I pretty much collapsed on a run,” Hannah said in an early January telephone conversation from her Iowa home. “I’m not a runner and I’m not going to pretend that I am, but it’s kind of my endurance. I force myself to do so many miles.”

At the time, she was in Iowa, and Hannah’s Apple Watch logged her heart rate at 195 beats per minute. The American Heart Association notes that the target heart rate for 30-year-olds exercising is 95-162 bpm, while the average maximum heart rate is 190 bpm.

“So on that run I was full force running and the ground started moving and just black came to my eyes and I just kind of melted to the ground.”

She curled up and told the people she was running with to give her a minute to regroup. She finished that run, but when she described her symptoms to a doctor, she was told to come in immediately.

Doctors tested her for diabetes, asthma, low electrolytes and — despite Hannah being highly fit — they checked her heart. The electrocardiogram came back normal, but her doctor wanted more tests.

Hannah was given a heart monitor in mid-December and was told to do everything she could in the next 24 hours to make her heart do whatever it might have done when she collapsed.

So she went to the gym for two hours, where she decided to run to try to trig-

Christi Hannah’s heart is being monitored so doctors can try to understand what is causing her abnormal heart rhythms. Courtesy of Christi Hannah

What is ventricular tachycardia?

By Kyrie Long

Alaska Pulse Monthly

V

entricular tachycardia is a type of abnormal heart rhythms that can endanger your health.

Christi Marie Hannah, an “American Ninja Warrior” contestant, is in tremendous physical shape because of her training. But the electric signals that tell her heart when to pump don’t always fire correctly.

In explaining ventricular tachycardia, or V-tach, Dr. Romel Wrenn, a cardiologist with Fairbanks Memorial Hospital, started with cardiac arrhythmia.

Normally, when there are no issues with heart rhythm, the heart rate is between 60 and 70, according to Wrenn.

The heart rhythm is set by the heart’s

primary pacemaker — the sinus node.

“It sends a signal to the atria and then down to the ventricle through this secondary pacemaker, the AV node, then it activates the pumping chambers — the ventricles,” he said.

In some cases, upper chambers may go out of rhythm because of some outlying areas of irritability. A person can develop atrial arrhythmia, where the atria, or upper chambers of the heart, beat out of sync or too fast, or a ventricular arrhythmia, where there is a focus in the ventricles, the lower heart chambers, that take over, according to Wrenn.

If an area in the main pumping chamber becomes irritable, it can start sending signals when it isn’t supposed to, V-TACH » 25

AlaskaPulse.com — March 2020 — ALASKA PULSE MONTHLY

23

ger the same response. It worked. Her doctors were monitoring her heart during the workout and called her to tell her to stop immediately and return to the hospital.

Ultimately it was an electrophysiology cardiologist who diagnosed Hannah with ventricular tachycardia. Something was very wrong in her heart’s electrical pathways.

Mixed signals

Hannah’s doctors, using a process called cardiac ablation, wanted to fix her heart by destroying the part of it that wasn’t functioning properly.

When the day came for her procedure, everything went as planned — almost.

She went to MercyOne hospital in Waterloo, Iowa, where doctors planned to insert a catheter in each of her femoral veins, located in the thigh, and then thread them up to her heart. The idea was to shock her heart so they could see which part of it was failing in order to destroy that tissue.

“It was interesting to see all of the little electrodes in my heart, just watching the video of it, you know, and seeing how he would control each one, setting them up and down and how they would need to go,” Hannah said.

Her doctor talked with her throughout the procedure, asking Hannah what she felt as the test proceeded.

They would shock her heart until it spiked and watch as her heart rate dropped and recovered.

At one point her heart rate rose above 280. Hannah said it felt as though someone was crushing her head but at the same time they were turning a knife in her chest. She could feel her heart spasming.

That was when they had to stop the process.

Hannah said her doctor came over and told her, “We have you at the most dangerous levels we can put you at and it’s not doing anything.”

Somehow, despite multiple readings on heart monitors while she was training, doctors didn’t find what they were looking for.

The next obstacle

Going into the procedure, Hannah 24

Christi Hannah coaches children and has maintained an optimistic mindset, despite her recent setbacks.

said she wasn’t afraid to die but was afraid to leave her children behind.

She hasn’t talked about the subject with the kids she coaches at work beyond telling them she had to have an operation, but her own three children are a different story. Her oldest child, Emily, is 11, while the younger two, Michael and Logan, are 10 and 4.

“With my own kids, they know quite a bit more about what’s going on, but I try to keep it pretty G-rated to where it’ll be OK. Kids are pretty smart,” Hannah said, after the ablation attempt.

The children have seen her on the worst days, when she has trouble getting up. “So for them, it’s definitely been scary for them.”

Although the ablation was inconclusive, it did bring some positivity. But it also brought some uncertainty.

Initially she was still planning to continue training following the ablation. She said there was some speculation during the procedure that, because of her rigorous training, her heart has

ALASKA PULSE MONTHLY — March 2020 — AlaskaPulse.com

the ability to recover from her episodes of ventricular tachycardia.

“There’s a good side of that, meaning that I won’t go into cardiac arrest,” she said. “They said that was surprising and that I can continue to train with my heart the way it is.”

The issue is figuring out what to do from here, though. It took some time for the catheter entrance sites to heal before she could go to the gym. Once they did, Hannah tried to work out again.

“I can’t do push ups consistently,” she said. “I can do 12 and my body was shaking so bad I couldn’t hold up. So I had to stop and usually I do 70 to 80 straight through.”

She hasn’t risked a workout again.

“From the day that I tried, that was the only one I tried and that was scary enough for me that I’m just not going to push it.”

She said she’d like to try again, but she’s leery of doing anything at this point. Hannah says she can’t even stand at work for long periods of time.

V-TACH

Continued from 23 thus starting an abnormal rhythm.

In Hannah’s case, her left ventricle is the one having trouble.

If the heart rate is above 100, doctors call it tachycardia, whether in the atria or the ventricles.

“If you take a normal person,” he said, “up to 4 percent of normal people can have bouts of ventricular tachycardia, where the ventricle becomes irritable and starts beating fast for up to, and in general, less than 30 seconds and we call that ‘non-sustained.’”

Non-sustained ventricular tachycardia, according to Wrenn, is generally DR. ROMEL WRENN not a problem unless someone has a weak heart. Most people can tolerate it, and in most cases doctors wouldn’t know about it unless people develop symptoms.

Generally, he noted, people notice the fluttering and become faint or notice their heart is beating fast.

Different complications can develop from V-tach.

“The most common thing would be that if it’s sustained and if it’s fast enough, the person may have bouts of loss of consciousness,” Wrenn said. “If the heart is weak or in some cases, depending on how fast it’s going, it can lead to sudden cardiac death where the blood pressure drops and becomes so low that it goes from ventricular tachycardia, and this rhythm can worsen or degenerate into ventricular fibrillation, where the main pumping chamber isn’t pumping at all.”

Causes range from issues with medication causing low potassium or magnesium, to poor circulation, to genetic abnormalities.

Christi Hannah hangs from the door of the Fairbanks Rescue Mission.

Another ‘Ninja’ shot?

As of right now, her next run on the “American Ninja Warrior” obstacle course is up in the air. She is supposed to compete in St. Louis in May. If the heart trouble continues, she said the show’s producers probably won’t allow her to participate, but she doesn’t know yet.

“I’m still not giving up hope, if that says anything,” she said. “People keep asking if I’m still going to compete this spring and I’m like ‘Yep, I am.’”

The optimistic attitude is a bit of a

Contact staff writer Kyrie Long at 459-7510. Email her at klong@AlaskaPulse. com.

theme for her.

She didn’t talk about what had been happening for months after the symptoms started. Then, one day in late December, Hannah made a post on her Facebook, telling people what had been going on. Ninja competitors posted many positive comments.

“Sometimes reality’s not the best part, but you can make a positive out of it,” Hannah said.

On Jan. 31 Hannah emailed an update for this story.

Her doctors had talked about trying to get her into the Mayo Clinic.

In a testament to the drive of people who choose to run grueling obstacle courses time and time again, some of the ninjas she trained with for “American Ninja Warrior” work at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and contacted cardiologists themselves, asking the doctors there to look at her case.

She now has an appointment scheduled.

“It’s amazing when life comes full circle,” Hannah wrote.

Contact staff writer Kyrie Long at 459-7510. Email her at klong@AlaskaPulse.com.

AlaskaPulse.com — March 2020 — ALASKA PULSE MONTHLY

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Jody Tate, director of Gateway to Recovery, part of Fairbanks Native Association. Below is a view of the nurses’ station from the commons room. Photos courtesy of Fairbanks Native Association

No boundaries

FNA’s Gateway to Recovery saves lives

By Diana Campbell

A

ddiction has no boundaries. It can affect anyone: rich or poor, religious or atheist, mom or dad.

While many people can use alcohol without a problem or stop taking drugs without a struggle, there are some for whom alcohol and drugs becomes a real problem. That’s because the way their bodies interact with the misuse of alcohol or drugs can cause a physical dependence.

“There are physical changes in the 26

brain,” said Brian Robb, the clinical director and physician assistant at Gateway to Recovery. “It’s an actual disease to overcome.”

ALASKA PULSE MONTHLY — March 2020 — AlaskaPulse.com

Fairbanks Native Association’s Behavioral Health Department operates Gateway to Recovery, a 24-hour drug and alcohol withdrawal facility. Statistically, Alaska is third in the nation for substance and alcohol misuse. Gateway provides medication-assisted treatment for patients and is the only dedicated withdrawal center in Interior Alaska.

“It saves lives,” said Steve Ginnis, executive director of Fairbanks Native Association. “Personally, I’m grateful for the help they have provided to hundreds of people suffering from addiction.”

Alcohol withdrawal help is the most-

“Drugs and alcohol hijack that part of the brain that says you will do this or you will die. This is not a choice. It’s not a moral condition.”

— Brian Robb Gateway to Recovery

sought treatment at Gateway, which is important because unmanaged alcohol withdrawal can cause death. Opioid withdrawal also can cause death but to a lesser frequency than alcohol. The issue with opioid addiction is that people who try to kick it alone often go back to using, Robb said.

Getting professional help for either gives people a better chance for recovery because of the nature of addiction. At Gateway, alcohol treatment can take three to five days. Opioid treatment can take three to 10 days.

People who are alcohol or substance dependent have substance use disorder, which medical professionals compare to chronic illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension, or asthma, according to a booklet by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

The disorder is why it’s hard to stop using substances, even if the sufferer knows the use needs to stop.

“It’s a hijacker,” Robb said. “Drugs and alcohol hijack that part of the brain that says you will do this or you will die. This is not a choice. It’s not a moral condition.”

Since 2005 Alaska has exceeded the per capita national average for alcohol consumption, according to an epidemiology report by the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services. Alaska is third highest state for excessive consumption, with Fairbanks having the highest excessive drinking rates in the state. About 23% of people here struggle with alcohol, above state and national averages.

Alcohol addiction is deadly. Being an alcoholic reduces lifespan by 30 years, Robb said. About 1 in 3 traffic accident fatalities in Alaska during 2012-2016 in Alaska were alcohol-related, according to the state report. One in five people who were hospitalized because of an injury had suspected or proven alcohol use. Half of all adults Top: A patient room, with a bathroom. The center has 10 beds. Center: A blood pressure monitor sits ready in the hallway. Patients are medically monitored while at Gateway.

At left, sometimes patients come with only the clothes they’re wearing. The facility has a stock clothing closet. New socks are always welcome. Far left, Brian Robb, Gateway clinical director and physician assistant. All patients are medically screened to make sure they can go through withdrawal. Staff also check their vital statistics regularly.

AlaskaPulse.com — March 2020 — ALASKA PULSE MONTHLY

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YOUTH!

Gateway has a clothing closet with indoor and outdoor clothing and footwear.

Kick off your summer with fun, friends and activities at this year’s exciting Youth Encouraging Alaskans’ Health (YEAH) Summit.

Come with your friends to this year’s YEAH Summit for games, food, fun, friends, talent shows, prizes and special guest speakers all packed into three days at the UAA Student Union, in Anchorage.

JUNE 3-5, 2020 UAA STUDENT UNION ANCHORAGE, AK Register online for the 2020 YEAH Summit at: ruralcap.com/yeah at the UAA campus

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have someone in their family who misuses alcohol, which could result in death, injuries, neglect and domestic violence, Robb said.

Drug misuse is just as dangerous. Drug-related deaths were five times greater for Alaskans ages 25 to 64 than any other age groups, according to the state report.

Yet treatment is hard to come by. Only 19% of 20.7 million nationwide who needed treatment were able to get it.

In Fairbanks, longer-term treatment facilities have an average 30-day wait. However, FNA’s Gateway to Recovery is open 24 hours a day with around-the-clock medical staff. Patients, both men and women, can be referred or can walk in.

The facility’s windows provide plenty of natural light. There are double and single rooms, for a total of 10 beds. The facility has a nurses’ station, a commons area, staff offices, a laundry room and a patient kitchen.

A patient will first be given an intake assessment by a nurse.

Once admitted, patients are given a pair of scrubs to wear and assigned a bed. They are given food even if it’s not during a scheduled meal time.

Patients are checked every 30 minutes by staff. Appropriate medications are prescribed: benzodiazepines for alcohol withdrawal; and clonidine, Suboxone and medications for nausea, vomiting and anxiety for opioid withdrawal.

The stay is voluntary, said Jody Tate, Gateway to Recovery’s director.

“Our doors are not locked,” Tate said. “People have to want to be here.”

They often see the same people, which Tate takes to mean people see Gateway as a safe place to be.

Staff members don’t want the facility to be known as just a detox center. It’s more, said Robb, the clinical director and physician assistant.

“Gateway to Recovery is a good name for us, because we are a gateway,” he said. “This is very often the first step toward recovery.”

Diana Campbell is director of communications at Fairbanks Native Association.

o

HEALTH SENSE

Power toothbrushes vs. ordinary toothbrushes for kids

By Dr. Evan L. Wheeler, D.D.S.

D

ental experts agree that regular tooth brushing, no matter how high tech or low tech the gadget, and flossing does prevent tooth decay.

The technology of power toothbrushes has come a long way in the last 20 years. Kids have many options to choose from that range from Super Mario to Sparkle the Unicorn. The No. 1 Amazon-selling kids power toothbrush is ORAL-B Pro-Health battery-powered Disney’s Frozen.

However, I recommend the third bestseller, known as Philips Sonicare for kids rechargeable electric toothbrush.

Trying to get your children to brush their teeth can sometimes be quite the struggle, but if you can inspire enthusiasm in children with decorated power toothbrushes, daily brushing becomes easier.

The American Dental Association has researched both ordinary and power toothbrushes and has determined that power toothbrushes are better at removing plaque. Plaque is a collection of bacteria that forms on the teeth and produces acid. The acid dissolves tooth structure, which causes cavities.

Long-term plaque on teeth can cause gum irritation and inflammation, which contributes to bone loss, also known as periodontitis.

All of this can come at a great cost, including your teeth, at the dentist. That is why we highly recommend good oral hygiene habits at home to prevent costly dental visits.

The most important thing you can

do for your dental health besides good home care habits is regular exam and cleaning appointments every six months. Your dentist and hygienist can remove the buildup (calculus) on your teeth that is not able to be removed by brushing and flossing. By coming in twice a year, you can head off more-complicated expensive procedures.

It is kind of like changing the oil in your vehicle. If you never change the oil, all the sludge and carbon byproduct builds up and damages the engine. Same thing with long-term calculus built up on your teeth. The damage it causes results in your gums bleeding, bone loss and ultimately tooth loss.

We have encouraged the use of Philips Sonicare power toothbrushes, and as a result many of our patients’ chair time during hygiene appointments has decreased immensely. And some even call it a spa day for their mouths.

I believe that the Philips Sonicare is the most powerful of electric toothbrushes and the most effective. With regular brushing and flossing in combination of periodic dental exam and cleaning appointments, you can keep your teeth and gums healthy. You can prevent costly dental visits and maintain a healthy mouth. Little dental problems turn into big dental problems when

untreated.

As a general rule, children up to the age of 7 should have adult supervision while brushing. This is to make sure kids completely clean all surfaces of their teeth, even hard-to-reach places where plaque often accumulates, such as back molars or the lower bottom teeth next to the tongue. Children under 8 do not possess the necessary wrist dexterity to brush as thoroughly as needed. The American Dental Association has more suggestions for parents to help their kids develop good dental habits: • Take your child to see the dentist regularly. First visit should be when incisors erupt or start to grow in, which is normally at about 18 months of age.

• Encourage your children to drink from a cup by 12 months. Sippy cups work really well.

• Start brushing your kids teeth as soon as the first tooth appears, a pea size amount of toothpaste on a finger brush works really well.

• Limit the snacks and sugary drinks, including juices and sports drinks, your child consumes. Make sure there are regular meals.

• Never put a baby to bed with a bottle. A child can get baby bottle tooth decay. We know sometimes it does happen, but try to not let it become a habit.

• Dental sealants by the age of 6 to prevent the most prevalent decay (pit and fissure decay).

• In low fluoride areas, supplements can strengthen the enamel of the tooth and protect it from acid attack, thus reducing decay.

Dr. Evan L. Wheeler has been practicing dentistry in Fairbanks since 1997.

AlaskaPulse.com — March 2020 — ALASKA PULSE MONTHLY

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A grateful life

Blaze Bell happy to be in recovery

By Aliza Sherman

T

he word “Gratitude” is tattooed on Anchorage DJ and singer Blaze Bell’s wrist as a reminder to keep a positive attitude and to signify how far she has come in her life.

“The opposite of self-pity is gratitude,” Blaze explains. “Knowing that self-pity is my downward spiral, I have to have that constant reminder to get out of those moods.”

For Blaze, self-pity was only one of the negative and destructive ways she dealt with a series of traumatic events she experienced in the course of a single year.

At the age of 19, Blaze woke up to find a masked man in her bedroom. She was beaten and sexually assaulted during the violent home invasion, and although she survived, the experience drastically altered the course of her life.

After the ordeal, she was prescribed “a slew” of medications, including an antidepressant, something for anxiety, sleeping pills, and pain pills.

“I went from having nothing in my system like that to having five different 30

It took Blaze Bell several years before she was able to turn her life around.

Today, she owns a business managing her band, Blaze and Eric. Foto Isabel

things. It was way too much for my system and my mind,” she recalls.

That same year, Blaze’s stepfather left the family and then her biological father passed away.

“I needed to check out. I have been kind of surviving and now I don’t want to die, but I just really need a break from this reality because I have no idea how to handle it. So the beginning of my

ALASKA PULSE MONTHLY — March 2020 — AlaskaPulse.com

addiction was at that point,” says Blaze.

She started abusing some of the prescription drugs she had on hand.

She reasoned that since a doctor gave the pills to her, how bad could it be? It wasn’t illegal, she thought.

After a few years of abusing prescription drugs, she turned 21 and began to drink. Then she developed an eating disorder, bulimia. She later learned that

Ash Adams photo

eating disorders and addiction are common reactions to assault and abuse.

“These are things that nobody wants to talk about. Nobody wants to say word ‘rape.’ Nobody wants to talk about an eating disorder. I feel like that’s one of the reasons they’re so prevalent. But it’s the kind of things we suffer in silence.

So it feels really important to me to just say that is something I went through.”

Getting sober

Blaze says she flirted with sobriety off and on for years. She would attend 12-step meetings to appease her mom or her boyfriend at the time because she was “behaving badly.” She admits she wasn’t really going for herself but for them when they expressed concern about her drinking. Then she would leave the meetings, go to a bar, and drink.

Learning she was pregnant with her son motivated her to stop drinking for a time, although she confesses that she

“I thought ‘I’m clearly not an addict’ because I had just went 10 months with nothing so it should be fine, right?

And it wasn’t.” had double vision when she looked at the positive pregnancy test because she was still intoxicated from the night before. Because she understood that pregnant women should not drink, she decided to go cold turkey.

While she managed to stay away from alcohol during her pregnancy, she admits she went about it the wrong way and had to “white-knuckle it” with little support. While experiencing the drastic effects of pregnancy hormones, she didn’t have any healthy coping skills because she hadn’t needed them with alcohol to mask her emotional pain.

A week after giving birth to her son, she went out with friends to celebrate and was offered champagne.

“I thought ‘I’m clearly not an addict’ because I had just went 10 months with nothing so it should be fine, right? And it wasn’t.”

Blaze started drinking again, but this time she had a baby. She says her alcohol consumption was never at the level it had been before giving birth, but it was still something she did secretly.

“I had lot of shame around it, and I could feel myself instantly going back into that ‘poor me’ headspace. And for me, I’ve learned that self-pity is by far the worst emotion I can start spiraling on. If I start feeling sorry for myself, I make bad decisions.”

A few months later, she learned she was pregnant again, this time with a

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31

“I basically did the opposite of all my first ideas. Clearly my brain was not working right.

I needed to rewire it.

I needed to get very uncomfortable in order to change. And I was finally a little bit willing to.”

girl, and she realized she needed to stop drinking for good.

She didn’t want to get off of alcohol the same way she had during her first pregnancy because she had been miserable, and it didn’t stick.

She began attending a different 12-step group specifically for women, something that made her uncomfortable at the time because she didn’t have any female friends.

She recalls sitting in the back of the room with a hoodie on, crying and not talking to anyone. She didn’t pretend to be happy anymore, but she did everything she was told.

She worked the 12 steps of recovery, she called another woman from the group on a daily basis, and she showed up early to make coffee and be present. Slowly, she started to get better.

“I basically did the opposite of all my first ideas. Clearly my brain was not working right. I needed to rewire it. I needed to get very uncomfortable in order to change. And I was finally a little bit willing to.”

The turnaround

Blaze made the decision to put as much time, energy, obsession and money into her healing as she put into her addiction and she admits that was a lot on all fronts. That’s when she began to see positive results in her life.

She invested in a life coach, went to counseling, and says she says she is obsessed with workbooks, because she knew that the process of writing can help things shift so much more quickly.

She also started volunteering, pointing out that a negative place for many people is being obsessed with themselves and their own problems. A positive way to deal with self-obsession for her has been to get out of the house and do something nice for someone else.

Blaze works with STAR (Standing Together Against Rape) leading support groups, providing her perspective to staff, and even speaking with police about the experiences of victims of trauma. She was also voted in as president of Victims for Justice.

Working with both of these groups has additional meaning for Blaze

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Blaze Bell received the First Lady’s Volunteer of the Year award in May 2019 from Rose Dunleavy. The award said of Bell that “she is someone whose personal light has had a positive impact on countless community members who want to improve themselves, as well as heal from any past trauma.” Photo courtesy Office of Gov. Mike Dunleavy

because they were two of the organizations that helped her when she couldn’t help herself after the violent assault she experienced. In 2019, she received a First Lady’s Volunteer of the Year award for her work.

“It’s a testament to how far I’ve come.

They trust me and trust my opinions.

I get to show up as someone who was once a client who can give a really unique perspective and I can be there for other clients as well,” Blaze says.

Today, Blaze’s life is filled with music. She owns a business managing her band, Blaze and Eric, performing at weddings and at venues such as O’Malley’s on the Green and Sullivans restaurants in Anchorage. She also owns her own DJ business and teaches piano, voice and guitar a few days a week.

“I’ve got this really amazing life that I feel I’ve created, and it’s all around music and I’ll be bringing in more dance, which has been my number one passion my whole life. I one hundred percent believe I create my reality, and I love playing around with that and

experimenting with that.”

A new day

A typical day for Blaze starts with a six a.m. spin class to get her endorphins flowing.

“I’m a morning person which is super uncool in the music world, but I’m just embracing it now,” she says with a laugh.

She gets her kids ready for school, then spends some time on personal development such as meditating, journaling or tapping, a therapeutic technique also known as Emotional Freedom Technique, or EFT, where she rhythmically taps acupressure points on her head and body to release or redirect negative emotions.

“I try to do five minutes up to thirty minutes tuning into myself, setting my mood right.”

She sings or DJs several times a week.

Most of her non-working time is spent playing with and caring for her kids.

“It’s a huge deal that my kids have never seen me in my addiction. I’ve shown up for them the best I could their whole life

and continue to do so,” she says.

Blaze is also a certified health coach and an empowerment coach. When people reach out to her to get advice or support around sobriety or recovery, she responds because she knows how hard it is to reach out for help.

A lot is different in Blaze’s life since she stopped drinking. She has been clean and sober and eating disorder free for over eight years, and she is eager to continue to tell her story to help others.

“I know there’s some girl sitting in her bedroom right now who is going through things, but she hasn’t told anyone. And that feeling is so lonely, and it’s so powerless, and it feels like there is no hope. It is really, really important to me to let people know things can change.”

The trajectory of Blaze Bell’s life and career are a brilliant example of how things can change for the better.

Find out about Blaze online at BlazeBell.com.

Aliza Sherman is a freelance writer in Anchorage.

Comments about this story? Email editor@AlaskaPulse. com.

AlaskaPulse.com — March 2020 — ALASKA PULSE

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University Fire Department with Baby Violet and her mom, Yelena Bohan.

Hey baby! What’s your hurry?

Alaska moms share their stories of those times the baby just couldn’t wait

By Kris Capps

Alaska Pulse Monthly

W

Nan Blakeway and her son Jesse Scottsdale Blakeway. He was born in the driveway of a Fairbanks midwife’s clinic 33 years ago, in a Chevrolet Scottsdale Suburban. Photo courtesy Jesse Blakeway.

34

henever Jesse Scottsdale Blakeway shares his full name, people assume that he is named after Scottsdale, Arizona.

Not true. He was born in the back seat of a Chevrolet Scottsdale Suburban in a driveway in Fairbanks, Alaska, 33 years ago. When his parents pondered what to name him, his grandmother jokingly suggested “Scottsdale” as a middle name. It stuck.

He’s an active-duty member of the U.S. Coast Guard now, but that bit of family trivia always leads to fun conversations.

“When I tell people in Alaska, they seem to understand how this could happen,” Jesse said from his duty station in New York. “But people from

ALASKA PULSE MONTHLY — March 2020 — AlaskaPulse.com

the Lower 48 have a much harder time understanding the truly unique area that we live in.”

Jesse grew up in Healy, 110 miles south of Fairbanks.

He’s not the only baby who did not make it to the hospital or the midwife in time. Statistics of how often this happens were not easily available, but plenty of parents were willing to share their stories, with some even telling harrowing tales of treacherous icy roads as they drove north on the Parks Highway, one of Alaska’s main highways.

Here are some of those stories.

Room service

Nathaniel and Gabrielle Grimes, who live south of Nenana, did everything right in December 2018 when their second child was two weeks overdue.

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Delivering babies isn’t something that the University Fire Department does very often.

Danielle Mayo and her daughter Kayla.

They got a hotel room in Fairbanks and expected to rush to the Alaska Family Health and Birth Center when labor began.

Ninety minutes after settling into the hotel, son Jayson made his surprise debut.

Nathaniel is an emergency medical technician, but even so, delivering his own baby was a little scary, he admitted.

“I was smiling, but inside, I was like, ‘Oh dear God,’ “ he said.

Lost in Fairbanks

Sometimes mothers can’t make it to professional help, even if they live in Fairbanks.

Yelena Bohan’s baby made it clear that she was coming three weeks early in June 2018. Yelena decided to drive herself to the midwife/birthing center. She didn’t make it.

While trying to find a shortcut, she turned down a side street and found herself suddenly, hopelessly lost. Luckily, her 14-year-old daughter was with her and called 911.

University Fire Department emergency personnel arrived promptly. Good thing. Baby Violet was born shortly after they arrived.

The emergency crew initially tried to get her to lie down in the back seat of

The Grimes family includes Nathaniel and Gabrielle Grimes, big brother William and new arrival Jayson, who was born in a hotel room at The Wedgewood Resort. Courtesy of Nathaniel Grimes

her car.

“I’m not gonna do that,” she told them.

“I just got my car detailed.”

A crew helped her onto the stretcher instead. She was barely into the ambulance when Violet was born.

Her advice for others in that situation?

Bring a reliable copilot.

Due date

Danielle Mayo of Healy thought she had plenty of time to get to Fairbanks to

deliver her second daughter 14 years ago.

Instead, Kayla arrived exactly on her due date, en route to Fairbanks.

It was Feb. 20, 2006, and roads were covered in black ice as she and her husband, Kevin, frantically sped north.

When they got just a few miles north of Healy, her contractions were 55 seconds apart and she realized they should call an ambulance.

They continued driving until they met the ambulance, halfway between Clear

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35

Sky Lodge and Nenana. It was so icy that paramedics had difficulty holding the gurney still when trying to get her on it to transport her to the emergency vehicle.

Her water broke as they drove over the Tanana River bridge at Nenana, and Kayla was born at the Parks Monument, just south of Fairbanks and the community of Ester.

Danielle clearly remembers the entire crew crammed into her hospital room afterward.

“They were so excited,” she said.

“They are so used to everything being tragic. Nothing like new life. So they were pretty stoked. It was the best hands-on training EMTs could ever get.”

Family members had been following caravan-style in two cars and were a little disappointed the baby had already been born when they arrived. And no, they didn’t name her Kayla Ester, to commemorate her Parks Highway birth site. She is Kayla Rose.

Skinny Dick’s

Sometimes others benefit from those early on-the-road deliveries.

Evan Venechuk was born in his family’s Chevrolet Suburban on Oct. 13, 1991, just as the family vehicle drove past Skinny Dick’s Halfway Inn at Milepost 328 Parks Highway during a raging snowstorm.

He was delivered by his 12-year-old sister, Chelsea, who had been spending time during lunch hour with Tri-Valley School’s lunch lady, Nan Blakeway, who is the very same Nan Blakeway who gave birth in her own vehicle in 1987.

“She educated that girl,” said Evan’s mom, Cheryl Venechuk. “Even gave her a little book. She told her, ‘if this happens this is what to do with your mom.’”

There were no cellphones in those days and sometimes vehicles were temperamental on that long drive.

“None of our cars or trucks worked that good,” Cheryl said. “We were just

lucky they made it from Nenana to Healy.”

It had been 10 years since her third child was born, so Cheryl figured labor would be awhile for her fourth child.

But when contractions started, she knew they had to go.

So husband, Tim, and all three little Venechuks, ages 12, 10 and 8, piled into the vehicle.

Chelsea was super attentive, Cheryl recalled, timing contractions and following everything she had learned from the lunch lady. She delivered her own brother, exclaiming, “Mom, mom, it’s a baby.”

Evan is now 28 years old and moving to Juneau for a job in geomatics, which means he’ll be collecting data on geographic information.

That special day was commemorated by an artist friend who created a multipanel illustration telling the story. It hangs in the Venechuk living room.

Contact Alaska Pulse Monthly staff writer Kris Capps at 459-7546. Email her at kcapps@AlaskaPulse.com

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In the Fairbanks/Interior area, call Laurence Oakes at (907) 459-7548 or email loakes@AlaskaPulse.com

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Homer gardener Tina Seaton’s two apple trees produce Norland and Parkland apples that are perfect for pies but just as tasty when eaten as soon as they’re picked. McKibben Jackinsky photo

Home(r) grown apples make a healthy snack

By McKibben Jackinsky

A

n apple in the toe of my stocking Christmas morning?

It didn’t get any better when I was a kid growing up on the Kenai Peninsula in the 1950s. It was a bit mushy, not crisp, and bruised after traveling in Santa’s sleigh from some orchard outside of Alaska to my family’s house, but that didn’t matter. A fresh apple was a treat.

Now it’s possible to pick apples from trees in my stepdaughter Tina Seaton’s garden in Homer. Those gems of juicy freshness go into sauces, butters and pies, but the most enjoyment comes from eating one fresh off the tree.

Apple trees have increasingly been popping up around the southern Kenai Peninsula.

Greenhouses and high tunnels have lengthened growing seasons and provide a warmer indoor climate, while climate AlaskaPulse.com — March 2020 — ALASKA PULSE

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change is increasing what is possible to grow outdoors. And that means more of a local healthy fruit option for residents.

The benefits of local-grown stretch far beyond the convenience of picking an apple directly from a tree. For starters, there’s improved taste, as the thousands of shoppers at Homer Farmers Market will attest.

Dr. Rob Downey, a functional medicine specialist in Homer, said the shortened time between harvest and consumption also means better nutritional value than what’s found in fruits and vegetables sitting in supermarkets.

“Another really important benefit is that there’s a community aspect of knowing the farmer, making the human connection with the person that raised and harvested our food,” Downey said. “There’s lots of data now that social connections are one of the most powerful determinants of health, that the lack of social connection is just as problematic as smoking.”

Core support from the community

Louis Maurer of Bear Creek Winery in Homer harvests apples to be used in winemaking from Dave Schroer’s apple orchard. Photo courtesy of Bear Creek

Winery

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ALASKA PULSE MONTHLY — March 2020 — AlaskaPulse.com

Committed farmers and evolving methods of farming are part of the equation for an expanding list of locally grown fruits and vegetables on the southern Kenai Peninsula.

Homer’s maritime climate is a plus, giving the area its reputation as Alaska’s “banana belt.”

Opened in 1999, Homer Farmers Market draws growers and consumers together, the market doing double duty as an incubator for businesses and boosting awareness and appreciation for local food production, according to a 2018 “Growing Local Food” survey done by the Homer Soil and Water Conservation District, HSWCD. Only 5% of the food Alaskans consume is grown in Alaska, which creates shaky ground in terms of food security, but “if local foods are supported, then there’s the possibility of more producers being here. It has to be economically viable. So we have to support them to have food security,” said Kyra Wagner, Soil and Water Conservation District manager.

South Peninsula Hospital does its part to support local growers of apples and other fruits and vegetables. The hospital is Homer’s largest eatery, feeding 300 patients, long-term care residents, staff and members of the public every day.

Produce from a wheelchair-accessible peoples garden in the hospital’s long-term care facility was introduced into the hospital’s menu 10 years ago. That has expanded to

For more information: Homer Soil and Water Conservation District https://www.homerswcd.org/ Homer Farmers Market, http://www.homerfarmersmarket.org/ Alaska Pioneer Fruit Growers Association https://www.apfga.org/ Alaska Division of Agriculture http://dnr.alaska.gov/ag/

A Twitter Creek Garden farmhand arranges produce at Homer Farmers Market.

Photo courtesy of Homer Farmers Market

include produce from area farms, including lettuce, carrots, potatoes, radishes, beets, tomatoes, zucchini, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower — and apples.

“It has been such a great step in a direction we would like to continue going,” said Rhoda Ostman, assistant manager of the hospital’s nutritional services. “Our desire is that in purchasing the quantity of produce we require, it will continue to support the growth of (local) farms and the continued flow of such quality products served in our community.”

While farms in the Lower 48 have declined 3% in the last five years, farms

in Alaska increased by 30% and Kenai Peninsula farms increased by 60%, according to the soil district. Offerings now include such exotic crops as corn, artichokes, cucumbers, melons, arctic kiwis and apples.

“You’ll find fruit growers everywhere,” said Mark Wolbers of Alaska Pioneer Fruit Growers Association. “Growers are just limited by climate and growing conditions.” He pointed to Dave Schroer of Homer as “the most knowledgeable grower in Alaska and a fine gentleman to have a conversation with.”

Schroer got his first apple tree in the 1970s, but he estimated the fruit has

a harvesting history in the area dating back to at least the 1950s. He now has 24 trees producing 11 varieties of apples.

He also has cherry trees that produce six varieties of cherries, both sweet and pie varieties.

“It’s too many to be a hobby, but it is a hobby,” he said.

At 325 feet above sea level, Schroer’s orchard is on a south-facing slope protected from southwest winds by alders and other trees. It is, Schroer said, a “perfect location.”

Kindergarten and first-grade classes occasionally help with Schroer’s harvest, and he’s sold some fruit at Homer Farmers Market. The apples go to Bear Creek Winery in Homer.

“We like to support growing fruit in Alaska and we’re lucky that it makes really good wine and is available,” said Louis Maurer of Bear Creek Winery. In 2019, winery staff harvested an estimated 1,900 pounds of Schroer’s apples.

A Southern Fruit Growers Association, with as many as 50 members, was formed in the Homer area about 15 years ago. It has since disbanded, but Schroer estimated “there are a couple hundred people at least with a couple trees each. (Apple growing) has just taken off.”

That is music to this apple-lover’s ears.

McKibben Jackinsky is a freelance writer in Homer.

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