Deirdre Neilen, PhD: Trust is the cornerstone of good medicine. What happens when we find ourselves in need of medical aid far from home, and we are unable to speak the language? Gloria Heffernan is a writer and poet from Central New York. She offers us one possible solution in her poem "E. R. Takayama, Japan."
I am an infant once again with fists
balled up in frustration because
I have no words to express my needs.
No tools to take care of myself.
Here in this distant country
where I am a stranger,
where the language is
as alien as I am,
the doctor looks at me
with puzzled eyes
and even my racking cough
sounds foreign to his ears.
My voice croaks from laryngitis,
but that is not why I cannot speak.
I am my words
and my words mean nothing here.
And then the patient woman who,
until now, has simply been
my tour guide, becomes my voice,
explains my situation, guides me
on a different journey from the one
described in the glossy catalogue.
I listen to the rapid utterances
flying back and forth between her
and the doctor who looks at me
while listening to her.
They swim on the rising waves
of a language I will never understand,
and I do the only thing I can do.
I trust them.
