1.“Ko pa fè, estomak pa mon, tèt pa kalbas”
Melissa, I think this is what you have tried to tell me again and again. You tried to say it when I sucked up my stomach pain—a stomach ulcer in formation—to prove to my body that I am stronger. You tried to say this when I wanted to scream at my knee for failing me three weeks before 26.2 miles in Nashville. If I could have listened, maybe you would have said it when I collapsed into dream fog on our favorite couch instead of finishing our conversation. Here is the translation: “Body is not iron, the stomach isn’t a mountain, the head is not a kalbas (a fruit that is as hard as a rock).”
2."Se yon 6 ki di yon 9, 'Poukisa ou krochi konsa?”
This one explains itself: “It’s a 6 who asks a 9, ‘Why are you flipped over like that?”
3."Si absèa pa nan dèyè ou, ou ap di pwese"(If the abscess isn’t in your ass, you will say, ‘press it.)
My senior year in high school, shadowing in the ER in Omaha, I helped a physician’s assistant pierce a large abscess, that seemed to me to be a lime-sized zit near a woman's anal orifice. We pressed it till all the smelly yellow slime ozzed out, and stuffed it with gauze soaked with betadine. The woman screamed in pain.
Last Sunday night, a 22-year old woman who sliced the bottom of her big toe open along it’s crease made me sweat frustration when she kicked each time I pinched forceps to pick pebbles out of the area around her exposed toe bone. I stepped back and sighed.
I had already told her, “If I don’t take these out, it may not heal and you can get an infection."
I was preparing to tell her again, more firmly when the obvious slapped my forehead. She was speaking the language of shooting pain: “I’m going to die!” “It’s too much!” “Make it stop!” And I was trying to feed her logic. It’s like giving milk powder to a dehydrated tongue and scratchy throat.
If the pebbles aren’t in your toe, you will say, “Hold still.”
4."Tet chaje" (Head Loaded)
Here is the feeling: I’m sitting at the pharmacy desk, surrounded by papers listing medications I don’t know in handwriting I can’t decode. The dates are wrong, but I should be able to figure out which order in the computer the receipts correspond to by comparing items purchased—except that 15 of the 20 items on each order overlap, so even if I could read them, I have to compare each medication name. Then I need to enter the amount purchased, convert gallons to ounces, one is one-hundred twenty eight. Except, does it say 5 or 4? Or is that a 2? Oh and Givanson is bouncing in my lap, usually a welcome distraction, but he bumps my arm so I type “111111111111” instead of “128” And Charlie, the accountant, just walked in, “Hey Sara, did we sell 3 Dextrose Serums yesterday?” Did I mention that the desk is a mess, a Christian show about purity in the household is blaring from the pharmacy lady’s radio, and the cashier is tapping her foot waiting for me to count out 60 Comprimés of 325mg Aspirin?
That is “tet chaje”
5.“Two prese pa fe jou ouvri”
Too much pressing time, doesn’t force the day open.
