In PT

Look! You can see me in the mirror!

Sometimes my lack of Nepali language really gets in the way of things.  Yesterday I was in PT with a patient who started talking to me in Nepali while pointing numerous times to her eyebrow.    She started making pinching like motions with her fingers, so I thought maybe she was talking about using tweezers to pluck her eyebrows.  Maybe she’s asking me if I pluck my eyebrows?  It soon became obvious though that the answer to her question was not a yes or no.  Finally, I asked another girl who speaks decent English what on earth this lady was talking about.  Apparently it was something like after a recent surgery (or suture?), she now had deep throbbing pain in her head.  Even in English, I was a little confused.  Plucking eyebrows, throbbing headache.....oh brother.  How was I supposed to know?!  People just cannot understand why I don’t speak Nepali.  “Yvonne speaks it and she’s white...”  Maybe the difference is having lived in the country 2 1/2 weeks vs. 7 years, haha.

This eyebrows lady was quite the case.  When I finished using ultrasound on her frozen soldier, she starts pointing vigorously to her elbow.  She wants ultrasound there too.  (What do you think this is, lady?  Magic?)  I ask Yvonne, she says go ahead and do some ultrasound there, but for only half the time.  So I ultrasound her elbow, then she starts pointing to a spot on her back.  (This is getting ridiculous!)  I ultrasounded that spot for the 30 seconds left on the timer, just to make her happy.  Then she points to another 2 spots on her back.  Good grief!  I go to Yvonne, “Should I just keep ultrasounding ‘til we’ve covered her whole body, or is this enough?!”  Turns out, the lady had been in a traffic accident, and someone else was having to pay for her therapy, so the longer she was there, the better (in her mind).  Wow, I don’t know how she pulled that off, as far as I’ve noticed, no one has any rights here.  I don’t think anyone has insurance either, I could be wrong though.

We see sooo many traffic accident patients.  Other common things I see in PT and in the ortho ward are lots of women who’ve fallen out of trees (they pick the leaves for their cows), bad femur fractures, actually - a lot of big bone fractures in general, cellulitis (not related to cellulite) - gross!, and lots of burn patients (their clothing catches on fire from their cooking fires).  Also fairly common here are people with 4 thumbs.  I hope I happen to have my camera next time I see someone, so I can inconspicuously take a picture.  It’s a dominant gene too, so watch out who you marry - you could end up with a whole double-thumbed family!