I had this patient yesterday who only speaks vietnamese. His family speak adequate english, unfortunately, they didn't stay with him. He had a hip replacement. To make sure his pain was controlled, we asked him to rate his pain. Since he doesn't speak any english, that's hard to do. He would only say "hurt". I finally found this scale chart with different language translation on it. I showed him the scale and asked him to show me which number represented his pain level. He seemed to understand what I meant at first, but then he started counting on the scale, "1,2,3...". He thought I asked him to count. So then it got worse for this poor man. I had to straight cath him. He wasn't able to urinate on his own, and it's been a long time since he last urinated. He had over 900ml of urine inside. I called his family many times trying to get someone to explain to him what I was able to do. When no one answered their freaking phones, I called the translator, and she explained to him over the phone; at least I hope she did. This guy was so tense, I couldn't even get the catheter in at first. When I was pushing the catheter through, his thing was squeezing the catheter because its so tensed up. I ended up only draining half of the amount out. After it's all done, he asked "When home?". That's the most english I heard him say all day. I told him he would go home in three days. Then his family came right after, of course.
