When you get a new language down-pact.

JULY 22

I feel like I have mastered the language of Diabetes. To offer adequate services in translation, I needed to learn the language of Diabetes because of the huge amount of diabetes patients that she has. I spent one day away from the hospital and a couple of patients who came back were looking for me. I almost thought that something was wrong because they were looking for me. But then I remembered that I was translating for them the other day. They were so happy to see me as I walked through the hospital looking for Dr. Close. Being away for a day, it felt different being back after such a long time.

Important to shadowing Dr. Close was being able to speak the language of Diabetes. I have never taken insulin, but now I know what it means to take a 25 in the morning and a 15 at night. I know the questions to ask a diabetes patient to make sure that their insulin/ medication is working. The line of questioning has become a second nature to me. At first I was getting tripped up with all the numbers in creole, but when I pulled out my notebook and wrote down everything the patient said, it seemed like the patients opened up more about the experience with diabetes. The patients speak so fast when they talk about insulin! Also, I had to build my creole medicinal vocabulary because it was crucial. Certain questions about does the medicine gives you headache? Or does it make you go to the bathroom often— I knew. I always reminded the patients to moisturize and lotion they feet to avoid infection each night. Dr. Close gave me the lotion and I knew what to say.

All we need to do is walk

Now today was the first day of my work with Dr. Close. Doctor Close is no joke. See the other day, I was sitting down catching up on my blog and she needed help with her internet stick. She didn’t come to see me though. She came to visit a medical student whom she knew from way back in the day. She called me over to help saying “You are young, you know these kinds of things.” I spoke creole with the Pierre, a medical student, who comes to help on the weekends about the internet stick. Dr. Close’s eyes lit up ! She asked me if I speak Creole, I hesitantly said yes. And before you know it, I was engaged to provide my translation services for her. What did I do? I know what I did. I was going to be doing some translation services for Dr. Close. Dr. Close created the Diabetes Clinic for Hospital Albert Schweitzer and has been coming here ever since. She is no stranger to HAS ! She see over 60 patients a day, 80 even. Translation is such beautiful thing because I became the voice of medicine and the voice of the patient. I could feel my voice as a translator growing after time passed. What ever a patient felt, I had to vocalize it. Whatever the doctor suggested, I had to amplify it. I had to ask the tough questions and get difficult answers.

For instance, we had a patient who had a stroke in America, came back home to Haiti with a stomach that was rock hard. She could barely talk and was in great pain. Her children could not figure out what happened to her. My job was to figure out what happened to her and find out more information regarding when and where the stroke took place and determine what happened to her between the time she left America and returned back to Haiti. Her family was so concerned about her well-being was dedicated to guarding her health.

Some patients came to hospital for malnutrition, looking for something to eat. There is no food for them at the hospital either. These patients are hungry and often come back in weeks looking for more food. Access to medication is not easy for patients with HIV, finding that even if they have medication, sometimes only the first forty patients will be seen to be given access to refills for this medication. These HIV patients have little to no access to ARVs, the medication needed to help the size of the red blood cells. Specifically, this patient has HIV and suffers from Anemia. Double whammy. Anemia is manageable sickness in the US, but in Haiti, it is not. Not only does this patient have to chase after medicine for HIV, they need to find medicine for their anemia.

Another patient was bed stricken with typhoid fever and the only thing that could alleviate the pain was the him walking and allowing himself to move throughout the hospital. There was nothing else that he could do. I told him to do as the doctor advised. Sure enough, on my out of the hospital, I saw him walking around the hospital with his mother. Trying.

All we have to do is try. All we have to do it walk. No matter how hard or how difficult. We have to make a way through.