"He’s a very lucky man. Three broken ribs, broken nose,
dislocated shoulder, a number of cuts and bruises, but miraculously despite how many foot prints we found on his head he doesn’t have a single skull fracture."
So if any of you know of anyone in the medical profession please shove this blog under their nose and get them to translate it for me. I will be now and forever grateful.
Cheers!
4 comments:
What you want to do mate is replace the layman terms with real terms. Like a leg bone is a "femur", a heart attack is an "MI" (myocardiac infarction) that sorta thing. Contrary to popular belief Doctor and Nurse Speak is actually quite straight forward. So translate that it'll be fine. We're not doing REALITY but a REPRESENTATION OF REALITY: you don't want to make the jargon completely impenetrable for the layman audience. And also: my sister's a bloody doctor, why didn't you ask her at my BBQ last weekend???
I have a friend who's a retired GP (in the UK - she's also a pretty good science fiction writer!) and another who is an emergency room doctor in the US (and also a pretty good science fiction writer!). I could send them what you wrote and see what they say, if you like.
Liz
My missus (an A&E nurse) reckons it's fine as it is BUT, if you're making a point of going all techno-babble (which I assume you are) you could try the following (I'm making up spellings, I'll leave you to check them!):
Instead of broken say fractured, fractured ribs, fractured nose.
If you want something a bit fancier, instead of fractured ribs try a pnemothorax (collapsed lung) or a haemothorax (bleeding into the lung) presumably an injury caused by a broken rib piercing something it shouldn't.
Cuts = lacerations
Bruises = heamatomas
And a dislocated shoulder apparently is a dislocated shoulder, but if you want it to sound more medical you can shift the injury to his clavical (collar bone) which can be dislocated - although is more likely to be broken. Sorry, fractured.
Good luck!
Lucy: I want it technical for a reason and I didn't ask your sister because I was concentrating on drinking all your beer.
Liz: Yes please.
Michelle: Yes I am making a point of the techno babble.
Post a Comment