curve ball

One thing I love about interpreting is all the quirky, amazing, fascinating people you get to work with: both patients and medical staff of all kinds. And sometimes, if you're lucky and you work in a teaching hospital, you get to walk around with legendary doctors just exactly when they happen to be sharing their laboriously gathered wisdom with their med students, residents, and fellows.

I think about these people sometimes - the old, snow-haired men with hearing aids and slow purposeful movements that go with their slow, thoughtful words - and feel both honored to work with them, and just a wee bit nervous about what kind of curve balls they're going to throw me. Because there is ALWAYS a curve ball. 

The other day, I went into a patient's room with just such a team. The boy's diagnosis was a passing illness, on the upswing, and medically there wasn't much to do but prod at his belly a bit and declare he was to be watched and given medicine a little while longer. This I learned as the team gathered around his bed and did exactly that - almost to the point of ignoring his dad, who, I noticed, nodded vigorously at everything anyone said to him, and spoke in an octave much higher than your average man. "Perhaps," I thought, "he's nervous," so I did what I could to include him in the conversation as much as possible, despite the team's focus on his boy. 

Then, out of the blue, our attending snowbird looked me straight in the eyes, pointed his index finger right at me and said, "Can I ask you something outside?" Confused, I assumed he meant the boy's father, so I addressed the question to him. But almost before I finished my first phrase, I heard the words that bring any interpreter's smooth attempt to maintain transparency to a screeching halt: "No. I meant you." Uh oh. 

So I made my apologies, discombobulated, "We'll be right back sir, just a moment, I'm sorry," and we all filed out. The big man made a big show of glancing seriously behind him and shutting the door. I was sure I was in trouble, or there was some serious issue afoot with the patient that needed to be discussed - but why he should want to ask ME a question, I couldn't fathom.

Fortunately, the answer came soon enough. As it turned out, the attending wanted me to go back and ask, in as culturally sensitive a way as possible, whether or not the boy and his father had been getting enough to eat. Apparently, there had been a problem with/confusion around ordering food or paying for it. In the explanations that followed, I learned that this doctor was prepared to pull whatever strings were necessary with social work or the kitchen to make sure everyone got enough to eat: to the point that when one of the residents said that they could probably get a discount for the father, the attending replied, rather darkly, "Or we could just give him some."

So, not only was this attending physician taking precious time out of everything to make sure the family was eating: he made a clear effort to make sure it was done without causing offense or embarrassment, and he was prepared to find unorthodox solutions to that problem. He was so invested in the answer, in fact, that when I came back, I had to report my conversation word for word before the tension in his face eased, his concern abated.

When I got back to the office and told of my adventure, my colleague said, "oh yes, I know that doctor. He's terrible at speaking directly to the patient, because he thinks too collaboratively, but he really, deeply cares. He is one who investigates and uses his influence to really make sure that all of the families' needs are taken care of. And then he teaches that to his students." 

It's such a privilege to see medical staff fighting in this way for the patient demographic that I serve: poor, with low health literacy, sometimes poor literacy in general, refugees. So often in my line of work we worry about the times we weren't called to interpret for someone, and the staff just "got by" on "my crappy Spanish and his broken English." We worry they'll come back to the hospital because they didn't know how to take their medicines, or because they missed some key piece of information. We worry they might not know what they were diagnosed with or treated for (yes, that happens). So it does my heart good to know that there are influential people like this attending who will use their position and the resilient, good character they've developed over the years to make sure that their patients, at least, get excellent service.