FAIRBANKS, Alaska – Born and raised in Fairbanks, Matthew Kuhns headed to the Lower 48 to attend college. After earning his degree in Pennsylvania, he ended up in Oregon, married to a local. He convinced her to try her hometown. His family is in the ninth year of what was supposed to be a five-year stay.
Mike Plotnick grew up in Juneau but was looking for something different, really different, for college. Hawaii was great, but he returned to the Juneau area for most of his adult life.
Then there are people like nurse Amber Simonetti, Dr. Lucy He and Dr. Brian Trimble. Work brought them to Alaska. Everything about the place has kept them there.
Everyone in this random collection shares a belief typical among residents of the 49th state: Living here is a challenge, but it’s worth it.
“I think one of the true things about Alaska and Alaskans is that they are here because they want to be here,” he said.
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Plotnick is a heart attack survivor. The rest are or were caregivers. American Heart Association News spent time with each of them while reporting on a series about health in rural America.
The following vignettes offer insight into who each is, some of their personal or professional challenges, and why they are proud to call Alaska home.
(VIDEO: In Alaska, health care challenges are at their most extreme)
Mike Plotnick started skiing at such a young age that he sometimes skied the quarter mile to and from elementary school.
To this day, his fondest memories are of sliding across snow and ice, powered only by his arms, legs, and gravity.
“Nordic, alpine, cross-country and touring skiing is a lifelong passion,” he said.
In 1997, he and his wife, Judy, moved to their “dream home” in Douglas Island, a Juneau neighborhood. Part of what made it great was the proximity to Eaglecrest Ski Area. He toured those tracks more frequently after retiring early in 2017.
In 2020, when Mike was 60 years old and in very good shape, although with a family history of heart problems, he was cutting logs on his property when he felt dizzy. A trip to the emergency room confirmed his worst fear. He was having a heart attack.
Then his heart stopped. A cardiac arrest.
Caregivers revived him. But they couldn’t remove the blockage in his heart. He needed a cardiac catheterization procedure to insert a stent. Although Juneau is the capital, it does not have a cath lab. A medical evacuation plane took him to Anchorage. The flight lasted almost 1 and a half hours.
All went well. The same thing happened in the following conversation with his wife.
“We have to move,” Judy said.
“We’re out of there,” Mike said.
Goodbye, home of your dreams. Goodbye, Eagle Crest. They moved to Anchorage to be closer to any medical care they might need.
Mike later learned from a guy he knew in Juneau, another fit man the same age who endured a similar experience: heart attack, cardiac arrest, medevac to Anchorage. The difference is that the other guy died.
“Every day,” Mike said, “I wake up and know how lucky I am.”
After earning a degree in biomedical engineering, Lucy decided to change direction.
His new goal was based on advances in biomedical engineering: he wanted to devise new treatments for cancer and offer them to patients. Then she went to medical school.
Except, when he began his specialized training, he realized that wasn’t his calling either.
As the deadline to choose a major approached, he didn’t like any of his options. He then began a neurosurgery rotation.
Once again, he found a field that was enjoying a breakthrough. Endovascular neurosurgeons fixed problems in the brain, neck, and spine without cutting those areas.
He knew immediately that this was where he belonged. For real this time.
During his training at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, a neurosurgery group in Alaska was looking for someone with his skills. She was recommended by a friend of a friend.
“It’s true that I did this interview because I wanted a free trip to Alaska,” he said, laughing. “Then I came here and I thought it was a unique place. Obviously, naturally, it’s very beautiful. But honestly, from a healthcare standpoint, I felt like you could really make an impact for patients here.”
His hire was so important that his practice issued a press release. He stated that patients with strokes or aneurysms who previously would have been flown to Seattle could now be treated in Anchorage.
Standing outside Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, Amber Simonetti laughed when asked why she settled in Alaska.
The hospital is in Palmer, a city of about 6,000 people that is a 45-minute drive from Anchorage. The snow-capped mountains of Chugach State Park loomed in the distance. A nearby canal empties into the Gulf of Alaska.
“That’s a big reason I became Alaskan: the hunting, the fishing, the beautiful scenery,” he said.
When Simonetti was young, he took care of his grandparents. She decided to make a career out of it. She and her husband became traveling nurses to see the country. They arrived in Alaska 11 years ago.
She worked as a registered nurse at an Anchorage hospital for about five years. She later became Mat-Su’s chest pain and stroke care coordinator. Her shift took her from treating individual patients to improving the system of care for all patients.
Their work also involves community education, such as teaching people to recognize the signs and symptoms of a heart attack and stroke, and encouraging them to call 911 if they spot them. The challenge, Simonetti said, is that “Alaskans are proud, fiercely independent, and generally don’t like to ask for help.”
His team came up with a way to use that to their advantage.
His speech begins by saying that the sooner someone asks for help, the more likely they are to recover quickly and completely. “That way,” he tells them, “you can preserve your independence and the quality of life you love, which is why you’re Alaskan.”
The Tribal Health Stroke Specialist
As an undergraduate at the University of Nevada, Reno, Brian Trimble landed a job in the medical school’s neurology department.
Its main task was to place electrodes on a person’s scalp so that they could undergo a test called an electroencephalogram or EEG. He indicated whether the patient had cognitive problems.
Over three years, Trimble learned so much that when he entered medical school, he had a head start in neurology. Enjoying it, he continued his training at the University of Washington. What he liked most was living in Seattle.
“Living in a place where I could just walk out the back door and enjoy nature was my childhood dream come true,” he said.
So, imagine how happy Trimble is to live in Anchorage.
He arrived in 1989 as a staff neurologist for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. He did so as a commissioned officer of the United States Public Health Service. Many of his companions came the same way.
“Most doctors who have worked here for a long time have a love for global health and reaching underserved populations,” he said. “It’s very, very rewarding. Alaska is an amazing place and Alaska Natives are amazing people.”
On his bedroom dresser, Matthew Kuhns keeps a map of Alaska. It is filled with about 50 map tacks. Each ball-headed pin represents a runway he flew to as an intensive care nurse for LifeMed Alaska, an air ambulance service.
“I’ve gone to pretty remote places,” he said. Among his most recent additions is Kivalina, a city on the northwest coast that is just 240 miles from the coast of Russia.
When your office receives a call for help, the crew (typically a critical care nurse and critical care paramedic) prepare while the pilot (or pilots) determine if the trip is safe. Pilots are intentionally not provided any information except the destination.
Because? Because if he or she knew the trip was for something like saving a child, he or she may downplay the climate risks.
One of Kuhns’ most memorable calls was one of his first. It was a flight to the treacherous Anaktuvuk Pass for, precisely, a plane crash. After his plane landed, the bad weather got worse. Other planes were unable to land, leaving only him and his companion to provide all the attention.
On another occasion, he flew to Hughes (population 85) in the dead of winter, needing to locate a man who was having a heart attack. Equipment and people were loaded onto dog sleds for a three-quarter mile hike in the dark and snow. The sleigh ride back to the plane included carefully transporting the patient inside a specially made sleeping bag that kept everything warm: the man, the monitors and, crucially, the flowing lines.
“Those are fun challenges,” Kuhns said. “We never want a bad situation, but those are the ones that challenge us as critical care providers.”
American Heart Association News sent reporters to five states to cover rural health challenges and how people in rural America are working to overcome them.
American Heart Association News
covers heart and brain health. Not all opinions expressed in this story reflect the official position of the American Heart Association. is owned or owned by the American Heart Association, Inc., and all rights are reserved.
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