“Bom dia” said the woman who opened the door.
“Bomn dia,” I responded. That’s the limit of my
conversational Portuguese. My heart sank as I looked around the room which
contained a toddler but no adult male. When I see a couple from a foreign
country, the husband is likely to speak some English.
The mother pointed at her child, made coughing noises,
tapped his chest, and produced a thermometer which she waved significantly.
Once she understood that I needed more information, she took up her cell
phone.
After some effort because her husband was in a meeting
she delivered a long recitation before handing me the phone.
I heard “He have cough. He have flu. He need medicine.”
In response to my question, the father insisted that
this was everything she had said, but I knew he was summarizing. I asked more
questions and received short versions of her long answers. The child looked
happy and not at all sick, and my examination was normal. He had a cold. He’d
coughed for four days and might cough for a few more, I explained. She was
already giving him Tylenol, and no other medicine is safe for a two year-old.
Luckily, he didn’t need medicine or bed rest or a special diet. It wasn’t even
necessary to stay in the room.
If I had handed over a bottle of medicine, every
mother from Fiji to Mongolia to Nigeria would understand that I was behaving
like a doctor. But I wasn’t. What was going on?
I’ve encountered this hundreds of times, so I work
very, very hard to communicate that the child has a minor illness (husband’s
translation: “Doctor says child is OK…”), that no treatment will help
(husband’s translation: “Doctor does not want to give medicine…”) and that
being stuck in a hotel room is boring, so she should try to enjoy herself
(husband’s translation: “Doctor says go out; child is OK…”).
Tap, tap, tap…. The mother beat a tattoo on he child’s
chest in a wordless appeal. Everyone knows that a sick child must be confined
and given medicine. Why did the doctor keep saying that he wasn’t sick?
I repeated my reassurance, and the husband translated.
When, at the end, I asked if she understood she knew the proper answer: yes.
She remembered her manners as I left and thanked me effusively.
I left feeling as discouraged as the woman. She was in
a strange country, trapped in a hotel room with a sick child. Despite her best
efforts, the foreign doctor didn’t understand that her son needed help.
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