More than medicine

I had the pleasure of taking care of a patient who was recently diagnosed with metastatic neuroendocrine tumor, whose journey left a lasting impression on me. What struck me most wasn't just the diagnosis or the treatment, but the resilience she displayed every single day. While she was in the hospital, her husband was in hospice due to stage 4 colorectal cancer. While she was talking to me about her husband, I tried to fathom how she was grappling with her own condition while simultaneously worrying about her husband. And despite everything, she kept a smile on her face and communicated with the medical team with positive demeanor. 

As I was meeting each patient on the list, I came across a Mien speaking individual who was admitted for severely elevated blood pressures. Mien-speaking interpreters were hard to come across, and, as expected, we were unable to reach them through the hospital's translator services. When reviewing the patient's chart, I noticed that the patient was hospitalized multiple times for similar episodes, and he was prescribed a home blood pressure regimen. It became clear that we might not be getting the full story, or something important was being lost in translation.