Mission day 3

Remember yesterday when I blogged about how grateful I was to have a translator? Yeah. Well. This morning, I knocked out a couple dozen fittings WITHOUT a translator. We were short a translator, I guess, and holy MOLY, that was the hardest couple hours of my life. I flailed for a while, trying to search out someone bilingual, but once I committed to just winging it, things started going a little more smoothly. It forced me to connect using my crappy half-ass Spanish and some wild gesturing. It was hard and rewarding and I felt so much more accomplished completing a fitting without Spanish help. 

Here are a couple pictures with my two go-to translators (where were you guys this morning?!!)

The first person I fit today was so frustrating I had to step away and try not to cry for a second. I had no translator and he kept asking for "más volumen, más volumen!" So I kept increasing the power of his aid, until it was skull-crackingly loud. He liked it. Two minutes later, after I'd fit the other ear, he gestured that it was too loud and we ended up back at square one. Over and over again. I almost lost it. Eventually, he was happy and I was happy to see him go. For every 10 amazing, easy patients, there's one who's tough.

That's another thing-- here in Mexico, a fitting takes us 5-10 minutes. They're happy immediately. In the US, fittings take hours and the person may come back over and over again to have the programming tweaked so that it sounds just right. There's an immense difference in expectation between the patients I see here and the patients in the US.