I am limited to English so I can't point fingers at people from another language who are making progress in mine. But I am interested in trying to speak and write in words that are acceptable and understandable by a wide range of people.
A friend got me into the book by Barbara Ehrenreich "Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer". It is valuable, thought-provoking and witty. At the same time we started a book for me to read aloud but it is not for us. So, I am on the search for something else. Searching for a book means reading through the table of contents of my Kindle which makes me see books that I have been meaning to get to. One of those is "Crooked" by Cathryn Jakobson Ramin, which is about back pain and the back pain industry. I have had some back pain but I recently seem to have made progress with my latest physical therapist and her diagnosis. Ramin was the result of a 2nd friend's recommendation.
This morning, a third friend mentioned a provocative article "Arteriosclerosis as Clogged Pipes". It has seemed to me that some people blame clogged arteries on fatty foods while other people say that metaphor is out-of-date and misleading. I think I found the article he meant here: http://circoutcomes.ahajournals.org/content/6/1/129
I once kidded my doctor that I knew all about health care from watching "Scrubs." I have since updated my medical knowledge with tv shows Gray's Anatomy, Private Practice, Bones and recently Emily Owens, MD. I have been interested in the controversy between the low fat people and the fat-is-ok people. As I read through Clogged Pipes, I tried to understand what the expert meant.
There are several references to PCI's. What's a PCI? The letters stand for the words "percutaneous cardiac intervention". Cutting into the chest and fixing the heart. Why not say that? There are several reasons. "PCI" is shorter than either phrase. When the doctor says "PCI", I can feel that it is professional language and my loved one is in good, advanced hands. As Prof. Richard Lanham wrote in "Style: An Anti-Textbook", people would rather be informed that they are losing their jobs or might lose a loved one by formal, solemn language, not by crisp, light, ordinary words.
