Doctors Abroad! Part 1

So back in the Dominican Republic we started an adventure that has finally come to an end! My teammate Aubrie would maybe choose a different word than adventure to describe her situation, but I will let you decide.

 

Warning if you are of the male gender… this may be a blog you choose to skip.  It is upon you!

 

Aubrie had been on her period for 3 weeks!  Normally this would be tiring, but to make matters worse it was not just a normal period… this one cause great more disruption to her body…  (I’m trying to spare the men who have choose to continue to read despite my warning, but you ladies can guess what that could mean). Luckily our contact’s wife had just had a baby, so we knew that there must be an appropriate doctor for us to see.

 

 We spoke to his wife and she told us about her great Dr! Praise Jesus! “Her only downfall is that she speaks no Englishâ€� …. We can work with that, we can arrange for a translator. So she told us about how appointments work.

“The Dr gets in at about 11:30 and takes patients by the #, but you can get a # as early as 9am.�

So we plan the day… we will get Aubrie there right around 9am, and I will use what Spanish I know… not very much, but enough to get us a number, then we will go to where our translator usually meets us and we will spend the morning at ministry then come back by 11:00 with the translator to wait for the Dr.

 

We are able to communicate our needs and are handed a number and are waved to some chairs and someone knocks on a door for us and leaves… mystery?  I’m starting to realize that this may not go as planned, so we send the rest of the team to ministry and to let our translator what is going on, and we will call and let them know when we need someone.

 

So as we wait I try and call our translator… phone systems are down… it is okay… but maybe I should start thinking about how I would tell the Dr what is going on and how, but we really should have plenty of time…

 

Then the Dr. pops her head out the door… she calls us in and I frantically try and call our translator again… no cell service… yikes(this is my polite filler word, but probably not the word I thought of in the moment).. I am officially going to have to translate this Dr. visit… and I really don’t speak Spanish!

 

I start to try and tell her what is going on, but she want to hear from the patient…. Except Aubrie really doesn’t speak any Spanish. So she turns back to me and I tell her what I can…

“Ella tiene el sangre del mes…� (she has the blood of the month) “Muy larga! (Very long or large… I’m not sure which!) “Tres semanas!!!� (Three weeks!!!)

She nods in understanding, Praise Jesus! Problem solved right?… Wrong! I forgot that that is really the easy part of a Dr appointment! Because even worse than speaking Spanish to get by I absolutely don’t understand any medical Spanish so am now completely useless as a translator because I can’t translate what she needs to tell us about what we need to do! She hands us three prescription sheets with instructions and drugs…. I am able to understand that one of them is a pill that she needs to take three times a day for 8 days, and that we need to call our contact’s wife and have her call the Dr and she will tell her what we need to do. 

She waves us out of her office, and closes the door behind us… um what do we do now… leaving is not really and option, so we call his wife… oh ya cell service is down… Maybe if we ask the front desk they will tell us where a pharmacy is at least. So we wait in line and as we reach the front the Dr comes out and waves us out of the building and tells us again to call our contact’s wife. So we decide to go to her house… no answer… So we retreat for the day.