It was like communicating with Helen Keller...

Recently, I treated a patient who was blind and Spanish speaking only. I don’t think this patient understood a word of English—not even “yes” or “no.” It was quite an experience. Because something like 33% of the patients we have at my hospital are Spanish speaking, we always have a Spanish interpreter in the hospital. Sadly, during the night there is only one, while during the day there are seven or something.

The first night the interpreter came right up for the assessment and it went great. I’ve learned that when you have a Spanish speaking patient, it’s best to tell them what will happen during the night so you don’t have to call the interpreter for every little thing. We also have these sweet Spanish “cheat sheets” that have commonly used phrases like “I have to draw your blood now” typed out so the patient can read them and know what’s going on. Naturally, this poses a problem when your patient is blind.

I’m just guessing here, but having never taken a Spanish class in my life, I’m assuming my pronunciation of said phrases on the cheat sheet is not even remotely accurate.

The 2^nd night, I had the blind patient again and my other patient was also Spanish speaking. I paged the interpreter. She called back about 20 minutes later (which is a really long time for her. They usually get back with me right away.) Of course that night she had a mom in labor and a trauma in the ED. My people’s assessments were a little lower on the priority list. So my night started off with a lot of confusion in spite of my attempts to use my cheat sheet and the blue translation phone.

At some point during the night as I was trying to do something for my blind patient I realized that this must have been what it was like to communicate with Helen Keller. I felt bad for the patient because he/she couldn’t express their needs, and I was frustrated because I couldn’t meet them.

Well, later that night I noticed that the blind patient’s blood sugar had dropped quite a bit—not enough to cause a problem, but enough that he/she needed to drink some juice to raise it up a bit. Naturally, this patient has no appetite and doesn’t want to eat or drink and I have no idea how to tell them it’s important that they do so.

Insert Google translator.

I pull it up on the computer and type out what I want to say and listen to the pronunciation a couple times. Then I roll into the patient’s room and proceed to completely butcher the pronunciation and tell the patient “Por favor beba jugo.” Then I put the straw up to their lips and stick into their mouth hoping they will get the idea. The patient did and took like three little sips then mumbled something in Spanish which I’m assuming meant “stop forcing this horrible substance down my throat and let me sleep. It’s 3 am for heaven’s sake.” (Again, just speculation on my part, based solely on the tone used.)

Anyway, it was pretty comical. And, it was only after that interaction that I realized I should have just pulled out one of our blue translation phones and it would have made the interaction A LOT easier.

Did I mention that that night all my patients spoke Spanish? Around 4 am I decided this not speaking Spanish was for the birds, and decided I will learn some this fall. Should be fun...