ozarque: Linguistics; medical language; Incantation morphology

ozarque (

ozarque) wrote,
@ 2006-03-01 15:17:00

Linguistics; medical language; Incantation morphology
Quick Medical Incantation Kit

Where Is It?

inside -- endo, eso, intra
outside -- ecto, exo
on, above, over -- epi, supra
under, below -- infra, sub
between -- inter
beside, around -- para
behind -- retro
away from -- ab
near -- ad
through, across -- dia
beyond -- meta
with, together -- syn, sym, syl, sys
against, anti, contra

What's Wrong With It?

It hurts -- algia, dynia
It's inflamed and/or infected -- itis
It's got a tumor or swelling -- oma
It's hardening -- scler
It's bleeding, or pouring out -- rhage, rhagia, rhea
It's growing, maybe too much -- plasia
It's developing wrong -- trophy
It's too [x] -- hyper
It's not [x] enough -- hypo
It's not [x] at all, or it's without [x] -- a, an, in
It's big -- macro, mega
It's small -- micro
It's bad, or wrong -- mal
It's phony -- pseudo
It's fast -- tachy
It's slow -- brady
There's more than one of it ... or a lot of it -- poly, multi
It's double -- ambi, amphi
There's only half of it, or only half is relevant -- hemi
It's changing -- meta
It's red -- erythr
It's white -- alb, leuko, leuco
It's blue -- cya
It's falling or drooping -- ptosis
It's difficult -- dys

What Are They Proposing To Do To It?

Remove it -- ectomy
Look inside it -- oscopy
Make an opening in it -- ostomy
Free it up -- lysis
Fuse it -- desis
Fix it, or sew it up -- pexy
Make it, or reconstruct it -- plasty

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Note: This material comes from the chapter in Staying Well With the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense titled "Your Head Bone Connected To Your Thigh Bone," where it's accompanied by a drawing of a generic human being labeled with all the morphemes that identify your parts -- like "mast" for your breasts and "cephal/cranio" for your skull and so on. So, if you want to write a story in which an ET is suffering from multiple hard and painful drooping blue breasts....

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	carandol 2006-03-01 03:50 pm UTC (link)
	When I was 12, I told the doctor I had a pain in the muscles between my ribs. He poked and prodded me for a while, then told me I was suffering from intercostal myalgia. I was quite impressed with this, until I looked it up in the dictionary... (Reply to this)(Thread)

wolfangel78
2006-03-02 05:34 am UTC (link)

The question is, was he trying to get you to go away or treating you like an adult?

When I broke my (index) finger -- a really bad break, it was bent 90 degrees, aiming at the thumb -- the doctor who diagnosed me (and who thought -- incorrectly, as it happens -- that I was a teenaged mother) told me I had shmushed my finger. I prefer the death-by-jargon than you're-too-stupid-to-understand, frankly. (The fracture was explained properly once the doctor realised I was not a young mother -- I had broken several pieces of the bone at the knuckle, one had been ground into powder, one had turned 180 degrees -- I forget the exact details now. Jargon was not used, which is fine, as I was in too much pain to decipher it, and there were no other adults with me to listen.)

Jargon and anti-jargon are both used to condescend, I think.

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beckyzoole
2006-03-02 06:32 pm UTC (link)

I prefer the death-by-jargon than you're-too-stupid-to-understand

Absolutely! A few years ago I accompanied a young woman from Korea to the emergency room for what turned out to be appendicitis. She was a highly educated graduate student, who had been in America for only a few weeks. Her English was "bookish" and academic; she knew almost no slang.

The ER personnel, when they realized that her English was limited, tended to use "child-speak" with her, which meant that she did not understand them.

At least three times, a doctor or nurse said "So, you have a tummy-ache?", which I had "translated" for her as "Do you have pain in your abdomen?"

"Oh yes", she answered, "maximum pain in intestines!"

Once, a confused medical care-giver replied to this, "Well, but it's a tummy-ache, right?"

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dglenn
2006-03-04 04:10 am UTC (link)

On the one hand, I've found it useful to throw just the right amount of jargon -- maybe not the "big words", but at least "the way a doctor would phrase it to another doctor" -- to get doctors to talk to me as though I'm able to understand them. It's easier to ask for explanations if they then get to technical than it is to get meaningful information out of the "baby talk". Sometimes they catch what I'm doing and shift gears consciously. Other times they appear completely unaware of what I've just done, but still switch verbal modes in response to it.

On the other hand, I'm rather dismayed at the number of doctors unable to process the idea that "a gram" means the same thing as "a thousand milligrams". A side effect of my background being general-geek instead of med-specific geek, perhaps. ("How much ibuprofen do you take?" "Usually a gram, sometimes only 800 milligrams if I think I can get away with it. It takes a lot to have any noticeable effect on me." "What do you mean, 'a gram'? Do you mean one tablet?" "No, I mean a gram. A thousand milligrams." "How many 200 milligram tablets is that?" "ARGH!")

I once got a bill from an emergency room MD for "Diagnosis: acute fracture, right fifth metatarsal." Thing is, I had broken my hand. (Well, a friend accidentally broke my hand (swordfighting accident).)

Then again, I've had both excellent and abominable care from MDs, but I've never gotten less than good care from a PA or a Nurse Practitioner. Funny that.

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victoriacatlady
2007-03-12 05:25 am UTC (link)

I read all this quite a while ago, but I've recently had an experience that's relevant and I wanted to talk about it a little in Ozarque's journal.

I had major abdominal surgery on February 21 of this year (2007). I spent a week in hospital, getting home on Tuesday, February 27. Soon after I got home the incision got infected, and on Saturday, March 3 it started massive drainage. I had not been told that that was possible, and as a result I and a supportive friend spent the night in emergency. All they did was let it drain for a few hours in hopes of getting a lot of the fluid out and then bandage me and send me home, with a side order of the resident telling me, "Better out than in."

I saw the surgeon several times in the next week, and on the last and most annoying day she spent a long time telling me repeatedly and in various ways, "Better out than in." No matter what I asked, pretty much, that's all I got. Why is it draining so much? Can anything be done to make it stop, i.e. produce less fluid or resorb what it produces? Is this normal? What about the irritation it's causing to my skin? "Better out than in" -- not in those words, but that's what it came to. I did finally get an answer to the question of how much longer it might drain -- 10 days -- but that's the only other piece of information I got.

And this is a woman who spent a long time with me, then and in other appointments, so time is not the issue. And in earlier appointments she did treat me as an intelligent layperson, so why is she now treating me like a five-year-old? Very annoying. My mother suggests that next time I see her I say, in the most neutral voice I can, that I'm looking for information, not reassurance.

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	Response to victoriacatlady... ozarque 2007-04-05 04:56 pm UTC (link)
	I have been disgracefully slow responding to this comment, and I apologize. You had a horrible time medically, and then you had a medical communication breakdown that made things even worse. That is truly awful; I am so sorry. I hope that you've been recovering without any additional complications and are beginning to feel more like your self now. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	Thank you! torapines 2006-03-01 04:10 pm UTC (link)
	This is wonderful. My family has been compiling our own notes/helpful hints for anyone who has a loved one receiving extensive medical care and/or going through a lengthy hospital stay. After our own experience this year (my mother was in hospital for 48 days) we've learned that this kind of translation tool is much needed! Thanks again for the post! - Tora (Reply to this)(Thread)

	Re: Thank you! Response to torapines... ozarque 2006-03-01 04:31 pm UTC (link)
	You're most welcome. I'm just sorry I didn't have a way to reproduce the drawing that had the most common morphemes for all the body parts. (Most LJ-ers could do that in about five seconds, but it's way beyond my cyberskills.) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Thank you! Response to torapines... technomom 2006-03-01 06:56 pm UTC (link)
	Do you own a scanner? I can walk you through the rest if you hve a way to get the image on to your computer. That isn't one of your books that I own, or I'd get it into place for you. It's on my watch list, though, and if I get it soon I'll scan that drawing and get it to you. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Thank you! Response to torapines... ozarque 2006-03-03 01:55 pm UTC (link)
	Thank you for the offer -- I appreciate it even though I don't own a scanner. One of these days, if I live long enough, I'm going to figure out how to do some of these things..... (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Thank you! Response to torapines... victoriacatlady 2006-03-07 01:22 am UTC (link)
	No amount of figuring will help you if you don't have the scanner. I have this same problem often. "I should know how to do X." Well, in order to do X I would have to have a particular piece of software that I don't have. It's once I have it but don't know what to do with it that I'm entitled to beat myself up with, "I should know how to do this." (Reply to this)(Parent)

lyonesse
2006-03-01 04:10 pm UTC (link)

one of the things about language is, it's hard to see where your idiolect leaves off and somebody else's begins.

i'm not an md, but my mom is, and i've worked in hospitals on and off for twenty years. "neuro-" is a higher-frequency morpheme in the english i speak than "brain" is. (for that matter, "morpheme" isn't especially obscure, either).

i'm pretty sure that literal translation of medicine by morphology isn't such a hot idea. schizophrenia doesn't really mean "split head", and somebody whose head is split ("massive cranial trauma"?) isn't schizophrenic. but i would certainly support the notion that part of informing a patient of a diagnosis (or conversely, of informing a doctor as to why you're there) frequently involves a vocabulary lesson. but it's frustrating as heck when a patient can't be bothered to learn the six new words that are the way most discourse about their disorder talks about it. when the patient is only willing to say "my arm hurts!" when what you need to know is "is that the ulnar-nerve side or the carpal-nerve side of your arm, or both?", even after you've shown them which one innervates which side of the arm -- then it gets that much harder to come up with appropriate diagnosis or treatment.

but of course, "that's our job" as caregivers; the patient can be as obtuse and incommunicative as they like, right? and the burden of communication is the caregiver's responsibility, because after all it is an aspect of giving care.

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Response to lyonesse...

ozarque
2006-03-01 04:34 pm UTC (link)

I hear you. And linguists are most assuredly pots-calling-kettles-black when it comes to technical jargon; it's just that the items we "create" with our morphemes don't have the sort of consequences that medical morphemes have.

My favorite example of totally "obtuse and incommunicative" language behavior on the other side of the line is "nephrolithiasis." 99 out of 100 times, that one will be meaningless to the layperson.

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Re: Response to lyonesse...

lyonesse
2006-03-01 04:48 pm UTC (link)

i guess i see it as a kind of regionalism. when i moved from new york to boston, i had to learn to ask for a "frappe" instead of a "milkshake". i certainly didn't parse "nephrolithiasis" myself (i'm a neuroscience weenie; i don't do so much with that part of the body, and my greek is limited). but as with "frappe", it strikes me as an open-class and therefore basically learnable word.

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	Re: Response to lyonesse... About nephrolithiasis... ozarque 2006-03-01 04:57 pm UTC (link)
	It's not that "nephrolithiasis" isn't learnable, but that it's not "generable." A layperson trying to find any sort of information about kidney stones can search endlessly in medical books and medical dictionaries without ever finding so much as a datum. It really wouldn't constitute pandering to add "kidney stone, see nephrolithiasis" to the index. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)