I knew I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to visit one of the WAMMI sites from the moment I heard about these amazing experiences on the interview trail.  As a third year resident I was thrilled to finally be scheduled to go to Peninsla Internal Medicine in Soldotna, AK in March.  I couldn’t wait to see Alaska and meet the legendary dog sledding Internist from New Jersey- John Bramante.  When we got the news that my wife was due with our first daughter 4 weeks before I would have been scheduled to leave, I figured I’d have to cancel the rotation and put my dreams of Alaska on hold.  When I told my wife that I planned to cancel the rotation, (to  my amazement), she said- “why don’t we just take the baby and go?”   So that’s how we found ourselves bundling our 5 week old daugter into a pickup (in her carseat of course) in -20 degree weather and heading for Soldotna on a sunny morning in March of 2006.

In short, our experience in Soldotna was the best month of residency.  We were immediately welcomed into a group of gifted and carring internists and had a wonderful time being a part of the workings of a small town internal medicine practice. 

An average day included waking up in our house on  Kenai river and looking out the window to see a bald eagle or perhaps the neigborhood moose strolling by our window as we drank our coffee.  Then I would head to the clinic which is accross the street from the local community hospital (with ~25 med/surg beds and 4 ICU beds).  I had my pick of patients to see and the opportunity to do EGDs, colonoscopies and transesophageal echos -all done by the internists in the practice.  In between seeing patients in clinic I would walk accross the street and round on a few of the practice patients in the hospital.  The schedule was EXTREMELY flexible and John Bramante and the other docs in the practice were always going out of their way to make sure I was getting the most out of my time.     

When I wasn’t occupying myself with seeing patients, we found plenty of ways to occupy our time.  Despite having an infant and the fact that the temperatures never got above freezing the whole tiime weere there, we had a blast.  We went snowshoeing, had dinner with the folks in the practice, visited Homer and Anchorage (where we saw the start of the Iditerod), went cross-country skiing, went ice fishing and (of course) went dog sledding with John Bramante (having a beer while watching the sunset and mushing takes a bit of coordination but is highly recommended!). 

I’d reccomend this rotation to anyone who’s got a warm coat and pair of gloves and is interested in working with a wonderfull group of physicians in a little different environement than Seattle.  -Brad Glavan IM resident 2003-2006