There are no tourist-y photos to show today. I spent the day in an Austrian hospital. My mom has an infection of her salivary gland. (I know, it’s weird.) The antibiotics that the “housecall” doctor prescribed the other day didn’t work. She received antibiotics intravenously today. If she doesn’t get significantly better very soon, I will have to insist that she return to the US.
Honestly, today was rough. It was really stressful for me, trying to negotiate an incredibly bureaucratic health-care system in a different language. Many people speak English extremely well in Austria, but it is still mostly the common, simple, conversational topics in the language. The technical, medical, conversations today were very stilted. Thankfully, they assigned us to an Australian doctor… but that was our prize for my having successfully navigated the maze of the rest of the system.
I have a newly-found sense of empathy for all of the foreigners who have to go to an American hospital or clinic. Dealing with a foreign language and foreign system when you are at your most vulnerable and stressed out is pretty awful. And I noticed that, for some people in the hospital, English was the common denominator language. What I mean is that they spoke Farsi (for example), and stilted English. The Austrians don’t know Farsi, so they spoke back to the patients in stilted English. Oh man, that must be frustrating and frightening! The situation produces lots of hand gestures, and stress.
I don’t know the status of computer-based sophisticated medical translation technology. But this seems like a problem that can be solved. This technology should be matriculated into every hospital in the world.
