A picture of Paty and a medical history in spanish

So, after 2 weeks, we finally finished Spanish lessons. Phew! Now, that is not to say that we are now fluent in the language but rather that we finished 20 hours of learning the language. Big difference! What we now need to learn is how to take a medical history in spanish and deal with the myraid of answers that we might get in return..... sigh.

At any rate, here are pictures of Paty as promised. She was not happy with the photos and they had to be retaken several times and even the final copy was not given a 100% seal of approval....

So, we left Paty feeling slightly relieved we had more free time to ourselves but also a lttle concerned that that was about all the formal spanish teaching we were going to get for this trip. The last piece of advice she gave us was, ¨Practice, Practice, Practice¨.

I don´t think I ever appreciated to the full extent what the phrase ¨Medical jargon¨ meant. However, it has played on my mind severely in the last week or so whilst I sat in on various Paediatric consultations.

Disclaimer: I am not responsible for bad grammar or spelling or inaccurate feminisation/masculinisation of words for the following paragraph.

¿Que sintomas tiene? - What symptoms does your child/you have?

Tiene tos por siete dias - He has had a cough for 7 days.

¿Tos con flema? - A productive cough with phlegm?

No, pero tiene fiebre muy alta - No but he has a high fever.

¿Cuando tiene fiebre? - When did he have a fever?

En la noche por ultimo tres noches, no puede descansar - In the night for the last 3 nights, he has been unable to get any rest......................

and it goes on and on and on. For any of the medical students out there, one understands that a paediatric history also includes immunisation history, birth history, allergy history, developmental history and feeding/growth history. There is also Anatomy to learn in spanish and disease names and names of investigations and drugs and description of signs..... and .... and.......

You get the idea. Medical jargon is a pain.

Oh well, despite all the wingeing, I am enjoying my time on Paediatrics and have seen some interesting things such as altitude sickness, lots of problems with infectious disease (mainly parasites and hepatitis) and am slowly expanding my spanish vocabulary.

I am sure Ingrid has some stories to tell about her time on Obs and Gobs but I will leave that for her.....

Hopefully, the next post will be on something more exciting like our recent trip to The Sacred Valley which is about an hour´s drive outside of Cusco!