Pulse
Journey into the Unknown
Frustrated by his patients who avoided health screenings, Arne Vainio, M.D., turned the camera on himself and created a remarkably personal documentary film.
The message light on Arne Vainio’s desk phone is blinking insistently. He looks at it nervously, willing himself to pick up the receiver and dial. It’s been three days since his glucose screening test, and Vainio, a family physician, knows the message he’s avoiding will tell him one of three things: He doesn’t have diabetes, he has prediabetes, or the words he fears most, he has diabetes. While not the usual stuff of film drama, Vainio’s health scare is at the heart of a new documentary, Walking into the Unknown, which chronicles his experiences with his health.
Many of Vainio’s patients at the Min-No-Aya-Win Clinic on the Fond du Lac Reservation near Cloquet can empathize with him. They, too, have waited by the phone for test results with uncertainty and even dread. And that fear has prevented many of them from even getting screened.
Vainio used to lose patience with those patients—the ones who avoid treatment until a preventable condition becomes chronic, who only want treatment for the immediate problem rather than its cause, or who wait until it’s too late before seeing a doctor.
Then in January 2007, Vainio’s younger brother suffered a debilitating stroke at age 46. His brother’s diabetes had been out of control, and he’d refused to address it, Vainio says. It was a wake-up call. “I’ve been frustrated by middle-aged men not coming into the clinic for screenings, and I came to the realization that I’m the same. I have the same fears,” he says.
Despite his wife Ivy’s repeated proddings, Vainio spent years avoiding preventive screenings for diabetes, heart disease, colon cancer, and other diseases. After his brother’s stroke, he decided to confront his fears about his own health and at the same time help other Native American men overcome theirs.
Walking into the Unknown is a remarkably intimate film. The camera accompanies Vainio, a graduate of the University of Minnesota Medical School and a member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, as he undergoes medical screenings and procedures—from a routine blood draw to a prostate exam and colonoscopy—that most people don’t even like to talk about, let alone have performed in front of a camera.
“It was personal and sometimes kind of intrusive,” Vainio admits of the cameras that followed him over two-and-a-half years. But throughout the process, he continued to remind himself how important it was to show other men that what they fear isn’t really so frightening.
“The primary focus of this film, and who this film is targeting, is me,” he explains, “middle-aged males with poor family histories.”
Sharing His Story
Vainio was raised in a house without running water in northern Minnesota. His father committed suicide when Vainio was 4 years old. His mother was diagnosed with diabetes at age 38 and eventually had a kidney transplant and both legs amputated. She died from complications of the disease on the night Vainio graduated from his residency at the Seattle Indian Health Board. Family members struggled with substance abuse, and Vainio is candid about abusing alcohol as a young man.
When he began making the film at age 48, Vainio knew he was at high risk for diabetes and needed to make some changes, not just for himself, but for his wife and young son. “I really do owe it to my family to take care of myself,” he says.
Vainio, who writes regular columns about health issues for several tribal newspapers and the website IndianCountryNews.com, also felt an obligation to share his story and message about the importance of health screenings with a larger audience.
He approached filmmaker Lorraine Norrgard, who happens to be married to his clinic director, for help. Norrgard had produced several documentaries about Native American issues and won regional Emmy awards for her work. Immediately, she suggested he turn his ideas into a film, and then connected Vainio with director Nate Maydole. The Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and Indian Health Service Special Diabetes Program provided funding for the project.
Although Vainio had no acting experience, Maydole says the physician, who is a practiced public speaker, was a natural in front of the camera. “He doesn’t prepare anything. He just does it on the spot. … None of it was scripted.”
Walking into the Unknown is divided into five segments; each addresses a specific health issue: diabetes, stroke, heart disease, alcoholism, and suicide. In the film, viewers watch as Vainio learns he has prediabetes and then follow him as he enrolls in a diabetes prevention program, makes changes in his diet, and exercises.
Footage of Vainio’s medical experiences and family story is intercut with segments that feature Vainio’s doctor and fellow clinic physician, David Jorde, M.D., explaining symptoms and risk factors in plain language, along with stories from other Native American men. For example, spiritual advisor Jerry Smith opens the film by discussing fears and perceptions specific to Native American men. “We’ve seen or even heard stories of people going to the hospital and coming out not alive,” Smith explains. “So then it began to be in people’s mind, that’s a place where they send you to go to die. So that is why people, especially Indian men, do not go to hospitals when they get sick.”
Changing Perceptions
Vainio explains that many Native American men have a hard time turning themselves over to a doctor’s care because they see themselves as warriors, a perception he shared. “We’ve got to be strong. We can’t show weakness.”
The film, which premiered on March 23 at the University of Minnesota-Duluth Marshall Performing Arts Center, is already changing some of those perceptions, Vainio says.
While working on the project, Vainio kept in mind three friends, guys who share his interest in building engines and farming but, much like him, were avoiding regular medical care. Within three weeks of the premier, two had come in for screenings; the third has since seen his doctor, Vainio says.
The film is also having an impact on another audience, says Joy Dorscher, M.D., a family physician at the University of Minnesota-Duluth Medical School and director of Center of American Indian and Minority Health. Dorscher showed the film to her medical students and a lively discussion ensued. “It really puts a face on the kind of things we talk about in medical school, especially the first couple of years,” she says.
Vainio says his experiences as a patient have given him a better understanding of his own patients’ struggles, and how hard it is to make changes. “I’ve made huge changes, though there’s been some backsliding because of my background,” he admits. “I grew up eating fried foods, lard on bread, and other things that don’t even sound good unless you’re raised on them.”
Now he has cereal, milk, and fruit each morning instead of skipping breakfast. He combines his exercise workouts with his interest in green technology. His vehicles run on waste vegetable oil, which he filters in his garage. He built a generator to recharge the batteries that drive the filtering system and powers the generator with an exercise bike.
When he is not working at the clinic, Vainio spends much of his free time promoting the film and attending showings in community settings and at conferences around the country. The film is also being used as a teaching tool for students and has been entered into several independent film competitions.
Now that he has gone public with his story, Vainio remains committed to continuing his journey to better health. “Especially now, I’ve got to walk the walk,” he says.—J. Trout Lowen