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But
balancing school and family wasn’t always easy. Hopkins refused
to miss out on her children’s activities, even if it meant
stress at school. “Code one-eleven” was her family’s
hint for “leave Mom alone.”
Hopkins now
spends every day with her youngest son, a high school junior in Dodson. Only
76 students populate the burnished red two-story building, the same brick structure
from which Hopkins graduated.
For the second
year in perhaps 20, students at Dodson are busy with a science fair. Hopkins’ plan
is to prep them for state competition next year.
After setting
up the last projects, Hopkins finds two freshmen stragglers sitting on the high
stools in her room. Her green eyes light up as she jokes with them, asking if
they’re hiding out. The two duck their heads and answer yes before Hopkins
shoos them to health class to ask the teacher if they can stay in Hopkins’ room.
“There’s
so many kids I see at Dodson now that have potential, but no self-motivation,” she
says. “I think I can understand these kids more, I can understand where
they’re coming from. I’ve been there. Who couldn’t be any more
insecure than a reservation, pregnant young mother?”
Hopkins runs
a hand through her chin-length brown hair and smiles, a grin that stretches across
her round face.
For
Suzanne Doney-Cochran, it’s health fairs instead of science
fairs. As
manger of the public health nursing department at Wind River
Medical Center in Fort Belknap Agency, Doney-Cochran, a Gros
Ventre, not only organizes health fairs and daily tae-bo exercise
classes, but works on disaster plans for a pandemic flu and
preparing for the possibility of an avian flu outbreak.
A self-proclaimed
perfectionist, the razor thin Doney-Cochran says the tiniest details can unnerve
her and her husband. It’s a habit hard to break: even a backpack dropped
near the door by her 8-year-old son after school is immediately put in its
rightful place.
“When
the house was even a little bit off, I couldn’t do it (study),” Doney-Cochran
says.
Like Hopkins,
she struggled with making time for family and fun. Doney-Cochran was so focused,
she watched television only on Thursday nights.
“Not
having a lot of time with my kids, that was really hard,” she says. “It
took me awhile to get out of study mode. I drove myself.”
Family tragedies
gave Doney-Cochran a final push into nursing. Her brother died seven years
ago, and her nephew is a quadriplegic, both victims of devastating car crashes.
She doesn’t talk much about either accident, saying only that her nephew
is doing great, and to note the anniversary of her brother’s death is
close.
“Nursing
is something that I have wanted to do since I was young, but I never had a
set mind on it” until the accidents, Doney-Cochran says. “I want
to be there to help people.”
She, too,
graduated from MSU-Northern. Now Doney-Cochran spends two days a week making
house calls. Tuesdays are particularly special, because she gets to see Louise
Martin.
“I
really miss her when I can’t see her,” she says, excitement creeping
into her voice.
As Doney-Cochran
enters Martin’s home, the sizzles and smells of frying bacon tempt the
senses. The kitchen is lined with cabinets the color of diluted Pepto-Bismol,
and a small woman shuffles to meet her, quickly offering chairs.
Martin is
one of Doney-Cochran’s favorite clients. A spry woman at 80, Martin
takes care of her husband and her own blood pressure.
She knows
she has to watch her diet and take her medications, much to her dismay.
“How
can you have ham at Easter?” Martin asks dejectedly, tugging at her blue
checked shirt and worn floral vest. Doney-Cochran repeats advice she says one
doctor gave before that allowed Martin her beloved ham: temporarily increase
both water intake and her medications.
Martin gives
Doney-Cochran the sad news that her husband, Alvin, will soon move to a nursing
home in Malta, about an hour away, and Doney-Cochran jokes about having to
visit him so far away. She offers names of alternative homes in Havre. As she
talks, her hands cut miniscule purple pills in half and rapidly deposit them
in a battered plastic pillbox.
As Doney-Cochran
uses a stethoscope to listen to Martin’s heart, lungs and abdomen, she
questions a noise in Martin’s stomach. Martin shrugs it off, saying she’s
eaten “a great big pancake” today.
Martin turns
the tables when Doney-Cochran admits she never eats until afternoon, lecturing
her like a doctor on the importance of three meals a day.
“That’s
a heck of a calling for a nurse,” she says in her shaky voice. Doney-Cochran
listens quietly with a smile.
Soon, Doney-Cochran
leaves the warm house for her cold minivan. Only then does she let her sadness
about Alvin Martin’s departure show.
“See,
now I’m not going to like it that Alvin is going,” Doney-Cochran
says in a voice tinged with disappointment.
But there
are still other house calls to make and Doney-Cochran slams the van door and
heads to another home.
Dean
Snow and Neil Rock both chose Montana
State University in
Bozeman after Fort Belknap College. Snow wanted a degree in
pre-medicine and Rock one in biology. Snow, a Gros Ventre,
says his plan was to return to the reservation and practice
general medicine. He came within a semester of completing his
degree, he says, before relationship trouble and burnout caught
up to him a few years ago.
“No
way I’d go back to school,” Snow says today with his quick smile. “Those
courses can get really intense.”
It was intensity,
he says, that once propelled him. He was involved in pre-med associations,
conducted research, attended classes and spent much of a summer traveling the
United States for conferences.
“It’s
probably why I’m burnt out,” he says.
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