doctors and more doctors

This week I have spent a good chunk of my time translating. A friend of mine (Reta) got sick about a month ago, apparently from a salad with bad mayonnaise. She saw her doctor and he gave her an antibiotic to get her over the food poisoning. Instead of getting better she has progressively gotten worse over the past month, but couldn't go back to her English speaking doctor because he had left for his month of vacation and is out of the country. So I suggested that I make an appointment for her at my doctor's office and I would go with her to translate.

MONDAY we went to the general practitioner. Her symptoms didn't seem to line up with an amoeba or parasite, so the doctor did an ultrasound and found out she has a problem with her kidneys. Monday was a holiday, so we grabbed some medication from the pharmacy and had a list of bloodwork to get done on Tuesday.

TUESDAY my friend had her bloodwork done and her husband brought it over to the doctors office in the afternoon. He said the doctor freaked out when she saw the levels of something and said they couldn't possibly be right and told him to bring his wife back in the morning.

WEDNESDAY I went with them back to the doctor and they had another set of blood work done in the morning and asked us to return in the afternoon. The doctor called me in the afternoon and asked me to be there for their consultation to translate. I went back with them at 5pm and she said the results showed the same thing and she was afraid Reta's kidneys were shutting down. She ordered some tests from a cardiologist and a nefrologist (kidney specialist), and said that most likely Reta would need dialysis, but the tests needed to be done first so they would know what was going on in there before starting treatment.

THURSDAY my friends picked me up for the 1pm appointment with the cardiologist. He was awesome. He said that there were no concerns in regards to Reta's heart (she had a previous condition they wondered about), but was VERY concerned that she see the kidney specialist immediately. We went from there to the generalist's office and after a brief consultation got sent to a clinic where we saw 3 more doctors (between a lot of waiting). They decided after more blood work and another ultrasound to do a scan this morning. I got home around 9:30pm and am heading over now to translate again today. Please keep these friends in your prayers.

My French medical vocabulary has doubled this week.