Kinda puts it all into perspective, doesn’t it? July 15, 2008
I’ve been seeing a new patient for a complaint of “body pain.” She’s a tiny lady from Guatemala who had never been to a doctor before her son was born here 2 years ago. Her 2 adolescent girls live with her family in Guatemala. I already knew that she couldn’t read or write in Spanish, and when she showed up for an appt 2 hours late, I got an inkling that she may not be able to read numbers, either. At our last visit, I wanted her to keep a log of her pain symptoms. The problem is that she doesn’t have a calendar in her home, and she wasn’t sure that she could read a calender that I offered to give her. She was reflecting on her lack of schooling, which led us to a discussion of how she came to the U.S. “Well,” she said, “I want my girls to go to school so they can be smarter than me. I don’t want them to be a country girl like me. I need to make money for them” That’s how I heard about how she walked from Guatemala, through Mexico and up to the Northeast. I heard about how she used to be a sheep herder, and her job as a dishwasher seems cushy now. She’s happy in her apartment, even though the landlord turned off the hot water without an explanation. She’s afraid of getting deported, because her son is a U.S citizen and she thinks he might be taken away from her. But overall, she feels lucky.