As promised, I’m late today.
I was about two hours getting to the hospital for my routine test, checking in, actually getting the test, waiting to be handed the results, and then getting home again.
Then another two hours trying to work out what the doctor’s report meant.
In Britain, doctors talk mostly in euphemisms and understatement, which seems to work just fine with the locals, who are the products of a dumbed-down state education system (no offence intended…)
It can, though, be confusing for foreigners, who have no idea that “Have you passed water yet, dearie?” could have any connection with the latinate verb ‘orinare‘
Italian doctors are the opposite.
If you went to a good ‘liceo classico’, and paid attention during your Ancient Greek and Latin lessons, you should have a good chance of figuring out what they think of the state of your insides.
Otherise, you’ll need to check each word invidually, or hope that some other dumbass has typed similar phrases into Google in the search for an explanation.
Here’s a sample:
Fegato nei limiti di norma per diesioni, contorni ed ecostruttura steatosica.
Sounds bad, doesn’t it?
I was already working out just how much I’d have to cut down on my wine intake each week, when I noticed that I’d mis-read the preposition.
It translates as ‘within the limits’ not ‘at the limits’.
Phew!
Want some more?
Non apprezzabili lesioni focali in seno al parenchima epatico. Reperto biliare nei limiti. Pancreas e milza regolari. Reni in sede di dimensioni regolari; non segni di idronefrosi o formazioni litiasiche.
I didn’t even know I HAD a ‘milza’.
Of course my wife, who did go to a good ‘liceo’, had it all figured out in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.
I’ll live, apparently.
Anyway, now I’m back at the laptop and gettting on with the business of the day!
Visit London and travel by underground (subway/metro – you know, ‘underground’ trains…) and you’ll regularly be warned to ‘Mind the gap’.
They mean the space between the train and the platform, which can vary.
Falling between the two would ruin your holiday.
Should you instead choose to vacation in Bologna and, while you’re here, venture onto the city’s buses, then you’d be equally well-advised to ‘mind the borseggiatori’.
What’s a ‘borseggiatore’?
Find out in today’s dusted-off, shined-up free Italian vocabulary lesson!
It covers Italian words for crime and criminality.
Click here to take a look.
A venerdì!