Carolina Alumni Review - July/August 2008

of education at the University of Virginia Curry School of Education. Wyckoff’s research focuses on pathways to teaching and labor-market issues in K- 12 education. ■ family addition Brenneman Line Thompson (’ 82 AB) and Karen Parker Thompson (’ 91 AB) of

Charlotte; a son, Tristan Ely Thompson, on March 28, 2008.

’ 83 Rose T. Dawson (’ 83 ABEd; ’86, ’ 85 MSLS) of Washington, D. C., has been appointed director of libraries for the Alexandria Library System. Sandra West Lawton (’ 83 ABJO) of

Orlando, Fla., has been promoted to associate creative director for Fry Hammond Barr advertising agency. Ray Stallings Smith III (’ 83 AB) of Atlanta has been appointed to the Georgia Judicial Nominating Commission. Smith is a partner in Marshall & Lueder LLC. Lindsey Handley Taylor (’ 83 AB, ’86 JD) of Essex Fells, N.J., has been named partner at

Alaska Fever

When Paul Bernard Nader ’ 82 arrived in would give him more flexibility to take off so he started making

Alaska, it was lovesickness at first sight. chunks of time — the kind of time he needed some calls, including to a profile

“I first went to Alaska in 1983,” Nader to go back to Alaska as a volunteer vet for the colleague back home. “In recalls. “I was immediately infected with the famous Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. The gig emergency medicine your

Alaska virus. It gets into your body. Some peo- was ideal: a bunch of people with the same mind just flashes, looking for possible ple are immune, but to those of us who are passion, huddled in huts along the more than answers. I talked to Ron Hodges back in Penn-not, you have it for life.” 1,100-mile race course between Anchorage sylvania, and he asked if the dog was bleeding

Nader developed interests in cold places and Nome, checking on the health of the dogs internally. I said, ‘We’re up in this village in and animals at an early age. “The first book I as the teams arrived. Alaska. I can’t do a CBC [complete blood read was about penguins. I count]!’ Then Ron asked about loved zoos, and I always wanted glucose. He ran down a bunch of to be a zoologist,” he says. other possibilities, but the word Those interests stuck with glucose just stuck in my brain.” him; he majored in zoology at From past experience, Nader UNC, and his fledgling career knew that there was a lot of obe-led him north. “After college, I sity in Alaska and, consequently, was trying to get a job with the a lot of folks with diabetes. He U.S. Park Service, but they were was able to find someone with a not hiring. So I applied as a blood-sugar meter and deter-maintenance man to 125 mined that the dog was in hypo-parks,” he says. After moving glycemic shock. The veterinary from one of these jobs to the team put the dog on oxygen, and next, Nader received an offer Nader began administering injec-from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife tions of glucose. “I was not Service in Alaska. pulling rank,” Nader says,

JEFF SCHULTZ/ ALASKASTOCK.COM

The job involved wildlife describing his course of action in issues, especially those related front of his skeptical fellow veteri-to whaling. He was stationed in narians, “but I see hypoglycemia Barrow, the northernmost town Musher Martin Buser, left, presents the Golden Stethoscope Award to veterinarian Paul Nader ’ 82 [in animals] a lot in the emer-in the U.S. and inside the Arctic ^at ^the ²⁰⁰⁸ ^Iditarod ^Trail ^Sled ^Dog ^Race ^awards ^banquet ⁱⁿ ^Nome.gency room. I gave her one dose, Circle, where the majority of the and she seemed to respond. I population is Native Alaskan, predominantly gave her more, and she opened her eyes. After Inupiaq. Whale hunting is legal for the Inu- the third injection, she started wagging her piaq, but there are concerns about the threat tail. In four or five hours, she was walking and to the whale population. Nader learned the her kidneys were working.”

Inupiaq language, accompanied whaling cap- For an emergency veterinarian, this might tains on the hunt and conducted pathology be all in a day’s work, but the Iditarod mush-studies of whales they killed. ers were impressed. They voted to present

Nader loved Alaska, but he was still Nader with the Golden Stethoscope Award for searching for a way to work more closely with his efforts. Nader still gives credit to his team,

animals and less with paperwork. He took the Vince Gresham, Vern Otte and Michael Zin-advice of an Alaska veterinarian to see if that deen. “If they hadn’t been covering the IV, I job might be a better fit. He earned a doctor of couldn’t have been running around making all veterinary medicine degree at N.C. State Uni- those calls and thinking about Ron’s comment versity and made a beeline back to Alaska. about the glucose.”

But Nader again returned to the lower 48 Just like the race — one team, each mem-in the 1990s, got married and now has two ber with different strengths, but all pulling in small children. He worked as a veterinarian at the same direction.

a zoo but figured jobs as an emergency vet

This year, Nader’s team at the Kaltag checkpoint, about two-thirds of the way along the race course, was called out to look at a dog that seemed weak and disoriented. The dog belonged to the team of Rachael Scdoris, a 24-year-old, legally blind musher who races following a guide-sled and who has been competing in sled races since she was 15. “The dog was acting depressed,” Nader says. “All four of us [volunteer veterinarians] started talking. We were out in this little village of 400 people without any special facilities. We were discussing our options when a judge became alarmed and said that the dog had become comatose.”