Lost in Translation.

The hospital I'm at for OB clinical is a county hospital where the majority of the patients is of the Spanish speaking population. In the time that I've been there this past month or so, I've only come across one who can speak both English and Spanish. Have you seen the movie Spanglish with Adam Sandler and Tea Leoni? The experience is something like that. Language barrier sucks, I tell you.

The first clinical was something else, I thank God for my Spanish freaking friends, otherwise the patient and I would be playing charade/gesture the whole night. I don't think she'd appreciate that. I bet that resident taking the history thanked her lucky stars too, she was flipping through her neat pocket notebook with cutouts of medical questionnaires in Spanish and stumbling through the pronunciation. Though I feel for her because we're on the same boat, I still have to say it was comical.

Anyway, so after that beginning part, patient was ruled to be "safe", only needing monitoring for an hour or so. Of course me, being a student nurse, is responsible for that. So I sat by her, reading the fetal monitor, and then silence.

*crickets*

*crickets*

Patient looked at me, obvious concern in her eyes. I smiled and said, while pointing to her pregnant belly, "Bebe es okay, I mean, bien," and then I gave her a thumb's up.

Wow, way to go Cee. You took how many years of Spanish in high school? Two. Yes, and how many semesters of Spanish in college? Two. Yes, and that's all you managed to say?! *headdesks*

Silence pretty much consumed the room that night. I felt HORRIBLE. I wanted to talk her, I wanted to comfort her, I wanted to build that rapport with her, but I can't. Other than "Me llamo Cee, soy estudiante de enfermera, como esta?", this girl right here no se habla Espanol! I understand conversation (phew, at least I got something out of those Spanish classes) but as far as speaking go, well, it's a no go! It brought me back to the first time I stepped on the soil of this country, back when I was fourteen and only knowing little English. Frustrated I say, frustrated!

Then 2 weeks ago I was in Mother-Baby, the floor where conversing to laboring mother would be, you know, beneficial. Again, I felt horrible that I couldn't talk to her, couldn't comfort her, nothing. All I could do was to sit by her, watching the monitor, touched her hand when the contractions hit, and held her when she got the epidural (before the nurse took over and told me I should watch how they put in the epidural). I hated that I couldn't tell her what I was about to do when I had to put in a straight cathether.

I was there for about 5 hours and all I said to her were:
- The introduction, which I said in English and the nurse translated, so this doesn't really count.
- "Bebe es nina or nino?", in which she answered "nina".
-"Su esposa?", when I came in to find there was a man in the room, in which she nodded and said "si".
- "Puje, puje, puje, mas, mas!", which I chanted with my charge nurse as she gave birth.
-"Es nina!", which I exclaimed when the baby was out.
- a "Congratulation" in plain English because my brain does fart sometimes, usually when I need it not to.

I've got four more clinicals at this hospital I think, so we'll see how much Spanish I could pick up. The fact that I just discovered a English-Spanish translations on the back of my OB clinical pocket book also helps. I'm quite surprised that I actually managed to find this before clinical ends.