The Doctor

When you learn a foreign language, one of the things they teach you is how to talk when you go to the doctor. They do this because the way to answer how you feel is very nuanced, and not ever a direct translation. If you just translate directly from English, the doctor probably will not understand. The more foreign the culture, the more true it is.

Yesterday we took Theo to a new doctor. I liked him. He spoke directly to Theo, now 6, about how he felt. He treated him as an adult. He asked about what hurt, and where. He asked how long. He asked him when he had last peed and if it burned. And then he asked him what his poo looked like.

Theo looked at him like he couldn't believe and adult would ask this question. This is more like what boys on the playground talk about. He looked at me like, "Should I really answer this?"

I said,"Go ahead."

He looked at the doctor and said, "It looked like this," then he drew the shape of a spiral in the air.

It made me laugh so hard. I am sure that IS what it looked like. What the doctor really wanted to know was, were your stools soft. Do you have diarrhea. Both of which Theo would have understood perfectly. But he didn't say that.

I guess learning how to talk to doctors in your own language is as learned as it is in a foreign language. Funny.