Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 630, Making a Medical Diagnosis.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 630.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Download a learning guide for this episode, an 8-10 page guide that gives you the vocabulary definitions, sample sentences, additional definitions, comprehension questions, cultural notes and a complete transcript of this entire episode.
This episode is called Making a Medical Diagnosis, when you go to a doctor and he or she tells you what your medical problem is.
Let's get started.
Where have you been?
She still hasn't been able to zero in on the cause of your pain and make a diagnosis?
No, she hasn't.
I can see how that would be mystifying and frustrating.
Are you still in a lot of pain?
I guess you're not up for going out tonight.
Tarell begins by asking Sally, Where have you been?
Sally says, At the hospital again.
My doctor is putting me through another battery of tests.
Her doctor is putting her through meaning, making her do some things that are perhaps not very pleasant, not very nice or require a lot of work.
What she needs to go through, what her doctor is putting her through, is another battery B-A-T-T-E-R-Y of tests.
A battery is a series of things, a group of things.
It's often used with the word test.
A battery of tests could be used to determine which classes you will take at an English language school.
They may give you a speaking test, a writing test, a listening test.
We would call those a battery of tests.
This is a battery of medical tests.
A few years ago, I went to the doctor because I was having problems with my allergies.
My nose would start to run.
My eyes would water.
My throat would sometimes make me cough.
All of these things were related to allergies.
So my doctor put me through a battery of allergy tests to determine what the problem was.
You can tell today that I still have allergies, because my voice is, what we would say, a little hoarse H-O-A-R-S-E.
When your voice is hoarse, you don't sound normal.
Your voice is often lower, more difficult perhaps to understand.
That's enough of my medical problems.
Now back to the dialogue.
Sally has gone through a battery of tests.
Terrell says she, meaning her doctor, still hasn't been able to zero in on the cause of your pain and make a diagnosis.
To zero in on something means to identify one thing, one explanation that solves a problem or that gives you an answer eliminating all of the other possibilities.
The doctor is supposed to zero in on the cause of Sally's pain and make a diagnosis.
To make a diagnosis, or simply to diagnose as a verb, is when a doctor identifies what your illness or medical problem is.
Sally's doctor has not been able to make a diagnosis.
Sally says no, she hasn't.
She hasn't zeroed in on the cause yet.
A symptom.
S-Y-M-P-T-O-M is some usually physical sign that shows you have some illness or disease.
So, for example, if your head starts to hurt and you start to get a fever, where the temperature of your body goes up, that is a symptom perhaps, that you have some illness, some disease.
Sally's symptoms are intermittent.
Something that is intermittent comes and it goes.
It's not constant.
It will happen sometimes, but then sometimes it won't happen.
So it's difficult to determine what is going on.
To flare up is a two-word phrasal verb meaning flare for a disease or an illness to become worse, often without any warning.
Suddenly my nose starts to run.
I start to sneeze.
I might say my allergies are flaring up.
They're getting worse suddenly.
The word flare has several meanings in English.
Some of those are found in your learning guide for this episode.
Sally's symptoms seem to flare up, get worse only when she's not under observation, meaning only when she isn't being watched carefully.
She isn't being monitored, we might say.
So when the doctor isn't looking, basically, her symptoms get worse.
The symptoms themselves, she continues, are ambiguous.
Something that is ambiguous has more than one possible explanation.
It's also a word we use to describe something that is confusing or unclear, difficult to understand, often when something could have more than one meaning and it isn't clear which meaning is meant.
We say that thing is ambiguous.
A question could be ambiguous, for example.
Sally's symptoms are ambiguous.
It's hard to tell what they mean.
So finding the root cause hasn't been easy.
The root, R-O-O-T, cause of something is the main cause, the main reason why something is happening.
Terrell says, I can see how that would be mystifying and frustrating.
When something is mystifying, it is related to the idea of a mystery, something we don't understand.
In more general terms, something that is confusing, something that is not clear to you.
Terrell asks, are you still in a lot of pain?
Sally says, We have two different kinds of pain.
We have mild pain, which is not strong, not too bad, not serious.
And we have severe pain, which is very strong, very serious, the opposite of mild pain.
We also have two different descriptions of when this pain occurs, when it happens.
Chronic pain continues for a long time, especially when it is related to a disease that doesn't have a cure.
There's no way to make the illness go away.
Occasional pain is pain that happens every once in a while, maybe once a day, twice a day, maybe every other day.
That would be occasional pain.
Sally says the mild pain in my legs seems to be chronic, but the severe pain in my back is occasional.
Terrell says I guess you're not up for going out tonight.
A couple of phrasal verbs there.
To be up for something means to have the energy to do something, to be interested in doing something.
To go out means to leave your house and have a good time.
Go to a movie, go to a nice restaurant, have fun with someone outside your house.
Sally says, after a day of being poked and prodded like a guinea pig, To be poked, P-O-K-E-D.
Proded P-R-O-D-E-D means that you are being touched many times, usually by a doctor or someone who's examining you for some medical problem.
It could be part of a test that they are doing.
They could be taking your blood.
They could be checking your temperature.
Lots of things that would require that you are touched many times.
The idea of poked and prodded is that it is somewhat painful to, although it isn't always necessarily that way.
It's usually used in talking about medical exams that require a lot of tests and that require that you be at the doctor's office or the hospital for a long time.
A guinea pig is a small animal that It's like a hamster.
It's used here however, because guinea pigs traditionally have been used in medical experiments and biological experiments.
It's now a general term to talk about people who are being used to test something new, especially a new kind of medicine.
It's often used in a negative way, meaning that the person who is giving them this medicine or doing something to them is using them without really knowing whether that thing is going to work or not.
It's an experiment.
Sally says after a day of being poked and prodded like a guinea pig, All I want is to curl up with a hot cup of tea and a good book.
To curl up with.
Here means to relax comfortably sitting on a couch or a sofa, perhaps with a book or a.
I want to curl up with a good book is a common expression, meaning I want to go home, sit in a comfortable chair and read a good book.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
Where have you been?
At the hospital again.
My doctor is putting me through another battery of tests.
She still hasn't been able to zero in on the cause of your pain and make a diagnosis?
No, she hasn't.
Part of the problem is that my symptoms are intermittent and they seem to flare up only when I'm not under observation.
The symptoms themselves are ambiguous, so finding the root cause hasn't been easy.
I can see how that would be mystifying and frustrating.
Are you still in a lot of pain?
The mild pain in my legs seems to be chronic, but the severe pain in my back is occasional.
I guess you're not up for going out tonight.
After a day of being poked and prodded like a guinea pig, all I want to do is to curl up with a hot cup of tea and a good book.
There's nothing mystifying about who the scriptwriter is.
You know, Dr. Lucy Say.
Thank you, Lucy.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again here at ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2010 by the Center for Educational Development.
