Blog — Clinical Spanish

Spanish for cardiac surgery nurses: the patient who woke up from bypass not knowing what happened to him, the family who waited nine hours for one word, and the patient who asks why the left side of his chest hurts when the surgeon fixed the right side

Rodrigo Salcedo was 67 years old. He had worked as a custodian at Roosevelt High School in East Los Angeles for twenty-nine years. His cardiologist sent him for a stress test in February after he mentioned, almost as an aside, that he had been getting winded walking up the stairs to the second floor. The stress test was abnormal. A catheterization showed triple-vessel coronary artery disease — three major arteries supplying his heart were critically narrowed. His cardiologist referred him to a cardiac surgeon. In the surgeon’s office, he was given a pamphlet in English and told the surgery would take “three to four hours.” He signed the consent form. He said yes to every question the nurse asked in pre-op. When he woke up in the cardiac surgery ICU with a breathing tube in his throat, pain in his chest that surprised him despite the medication, a drain on his left side, and an incision running from his knee to his ankle on his left leg, the first thing he said, when the tube came out and he could speak, was this: “¿Qué me hicieron?”

“¿Qué me hicieron?” — the bypass explanation and why “la cirugía salió bien” is not an answer

Rodrigo knew he was going to have heart surgery. He knew something was blocked. He knew they were going to fix it. What he did not know — what no one had explained to him in language he could follow — was what “fixing it” looked like from the inside.

In the surgeon’s office, the word used was “bypass.” In the pre-op paperwork, the word was “coronary artery bypass graft” and then “CABG times three.” The pamphlet had a diagram of a heart with arrows on it. Rodrigo, who speaks functional English but thinks in Spanish and reads medical vocabulary in neither, took in the word “bypass” and understood something like a detour — which is approximately right. What he did not understand was the scale of the detour: that his chest would be opened from collarbone to abdomen through the sternum; that his heart would be stopped and a machine would do the work of his heart and lungs while the surgeon built three new routes; that the new routes would be made from a vein harvested from his left leg; that when he woke up he would have pain in two separate places for two separate reasons.

The cardiac surgery nurse who walks into the room where Rodrigo has just been extubated and who says “la cirugía salió bien, ya está en recuperación” has answered neither the question he asked nor the question he does not yet know how to ask. He asked “¿qué me hicieron?” — what did they do to me. He has not asked because the surgery went well. He asked because he woke up in a way he did not expect and needs a map before he can evaluate how he feels.

The four-part bypass explanation in plain Spanish

The explanation has four parts, delivered at the pace the patient can receive them. Not all four parts in one breath. Not summarized into a single sentence. Four parts.

1. Name the problem in plain language.

“Señor Salcedo — lo primero que le voy a decir es qué tenía y qué fue lo que se fixó. ¿Le parece?”

(Mr. Salcedo — the first thing I am going to tell you is what you had and what was fixed. Is that okay?)

The question is not protocol. It is a check: is he ready to listen? A patient who just had his breathing tube removed may need a moment. If he nods, the nurse continues:

“El problema era que tres de las arterias que llevan sangre a su corazón estaban muy bloqueadas — casi cerradas. La sangre no podía pasar bien. Por eso a usted le faltaba el aire cuando caminaba, y por eso le dolía el pecho. El corazón estaba trabajando muy duro porque la ruta estaba casi cerrada.”

(The problem was that three of the arteries that carry blood to your heart were very blocked — almost closed. The blood could not get through well. That is why you were short of breath when you walked, and that is why you had chest pain. The heart was working very hard because the route was almost closed.)

Why name the symptom back to him: because “las arterias estaban bloqueadas” is an abstraction. “Por eso le faltaba el aire” connects the abstraction to something he already knows was true about his own body. The connection makes the explanation land.

2. Name what the surgeons did.

“Lo que hicieron los cirujanos es construir tres puentes nuevos — uno por cada arteria bloqueada. Un puente es una ruta nueva para la sangre, que va por encima del bloqueo. Ahora la sangre tiene un camino nuevo para llegar al corazón. El bloqueo sigue ahí, pero la sangre ya no necesita pasar por él.”

(What the surgeons did was build three new bridges — one for each blocked artery. A bridge is a new route for the blood that goes above the blockage. Now the blood has a new path to reach the heart. The blockage is still there, but the blood no longer needs to pass through it.)

The last sentence matters: the blockage is still there. Some patients, months later, ask why their cardiologist is still checking their coronary arteries if the surgery fixed everything. The honest explanation — that the surgery built a detour, not cleared the road — prevents that confusion.

3. Name what they used.

“Para construir esos puentes, los cirujanos usaron una vena de su pierna izquierda. Esa vena — la que está debajo de la piel — sirve muy bien para hacer los puentes porque el cuerpo no la necesita para nada importante. Por eso le duele la pierna también. Hicieron una incisión en la pierna para sacar ese pedazo de vena, y esa incisión está sanando igual que el pecho.”

(To build those bridges, the surgeons used a vein from your left leg. That vein — the one under the skin — works very well for making bridges because the body does not need it for anything important. That is why your leg hurts too. They made an incision on the leg to take that piece of vein, and that incision is healing just like the chest.)

Without this explanation, Rodrigo has pain in his leg and no reason for it. A patient with unexplained pain after surgery is a patient who is worried. A patient with explained pain is a patient who is recovering.

4. Name why he feels what he feels in his chest.

“El pecho le duele porque para llegar al corazón, los cirujanos tuvieron que abrir el esternón — el hueso del centro del pecho. ¿Conoce ese hueso, el que está aquí en el medio?”

(Your chest hurts because to reach the heart, the surgeons had to open the sternum — the center bone of the chest. Do you know that bone, the one right here in the middle?)

If Rodrigo nods, or if the nurse touches the center of her own chest to locate it, she continues:

“Los cirujanos abrieron ese hueso para poder operar. Al final, lo cerraron con unos alambres — esos alambres se quedan adentro para siempre, son seguros. Eso es lo que usted siente cuando respira profundo, cuando tose, o cuando se mueve: ese hueso está sanando, y los alambres lo mantienen en su lugar mientras sana. El dolor que siente en el pecho no viene de su corazón. Viene del hueso.”

(The surgeons opened that bone to be able to operate. At the end, they closed it with some wires — those wires stay inside forever; they are safe. That is what you feel when you breathe deeply, when you cough, or when you move: that bone is healing, and the wires hold it in place while it heals. The pain you feel in your chest does not come from your heart. It comes from the bone.)

The last sentence is the most important one. A patient who had heart surgery and who now has chest pain has an obvious and reasonable fear about what that pain means. “El dolor no viene de su corazón. Viene del hueso.” That is the sentence that allows Rodrigo to rest without fear. Without it, every breath that hurts is a question about whether the surgery worked.

What to do when the patient is not ready for all four parts

Not every post-extubation patient can receive a four-part explanation. Some are too fatigued. Some are dysphoric from the anesthesia. Some are in pain that is not yet controlled enough to let them listen.

The minimum version — the version that addresses the most urgent question and defers the rest — is:

“Señor Salcedo — la cirugía terminó. Los cirujanos pudieron hacer los tres puentes. El dolor en el pecho viene del hueso del pecho, no del corazón. Y el dolor en la pierna viene de la incisión que hicieron para sacar la vena. Los dos dolores son esperados. Cuando usted esté más descansado, le explico con más calma qué fue exactamente lo que hicieron.”

(Mr. Salcedo — the surgery is done. The surgeons were able to do the three bridges. The pain in the chest comes from the chest bone, not the heart. And the pain in the leg comes from the incision they made to take the vein. Both pains are expected. When you are more rested, I will explain calmly what exactly they did.)

This version answers the fear without explaining the mechanism. The mechanism can wait until the patient can receive it. The reassurance that the pain in the chest is not the heart — that cannot wait.

The family who waited nine hours for one word

Rodrigo’s daughter Esperanza arrived at the hospital at 9 AM. She works as a bilingual court interpreter in Pomona — she is fluent in English and in Spanish medical vocabulary, a rare and useful thing. She had dropped her eleven-year-old at school, driven forty minutes, and been told by the waiting room coordinator: “Surgery started at six. Usually takes three to four hours.” She asked where to wait. She sat down in a chair that faced a door she had been told would open when there was news. At 1 PM she asked the coordinator again. At 2:30 PM she was still in the same chair. At 3:45 PM — nine hours and forty-five minutes after the surgery began — a resident she had never seen before walked through the door and said: “Family of Rodrigo Salcedo?”

She stood up. He said: “He’s out of surgery. He’s stable.”

She said: “¿Salió bien?”

He said: “Stable means he’s doing okay.”

She had waited nine hours and forty-five minutes for the word “okay.”

The three wrong answers to “¿salió bien?”

The overpromise:

“Salió perfectamente bien.”

(It went perfectly well.)

The word “perfectamente” is a promise that nothing will go wrong in the next forty-eight hours. The first night after bypass surgery is when the monitoring is most intense precisely because complications — arrhythmia, bleeding, low cardiac output, fluid shifts — are most likely. The family who heard “perfectamente” at 4 PM is the family who, at 2 AM when a nurse calls about a new atrial fibrillation, hears the call as a contradiction of what they were told. The word “perfectamente” sets up a frame that every subsequent complication will shatter.

The evasion:

“Está estable.”

(He is stable.)

Esperanza is a court interpreter. She knows “stable” in medical English. She knows it means the patient is not actively deteriorating. What most Spanish-speaking family members hear when a nurse or resident says “está estable” after nine hours of waiting is not reassurance. The word “estable” in this context sounds like a clinical holding pattern — like the situation has not resolved, like they are watching and waiting for something uncertain. “Estable” sounds like the opposite of “bien.” The family member who hears “está estable” does not hear “he is fine” — she hears “we are not sure yet.”

The redirect:

“El cirujano viene a hablar con usted.”

(The surgeon is coming to speak with you.)

This is the answer that makes the family wait more. Esperanza has been waiting nine hours and forty-five minutes. The redirect tells her the answer is not coming from the person in front of her; it is coming from a surgeon who may arrive in twenty minutes or in two hours. The family member who receives this answer sits back down in the same chair.

The honest answer the family can hold

The honest answer has four components. It begins with an acknowledgment of the wait — before the clinical update, not after it:

“Señora Esperanza — su papá terminó la cirugía. Antes de decirle cómo está, quiero reconocer que usted lleva casi diez horas aquí sin que nadie viniera a decirle nada. Eso no debería haber pasado, y lo lamento.”

(Ms. Esperanza — your father has finished surgery. Before I tell you how he is, I want to acknowledge that you have been here for almost ten hours without anyone coming to tell you anything. That should not have happened, and I am sorry.)

The acknowledgment is not an apology on behalf of the institution. It is a recognition that what happened to her in that waiting room — nine hours of silence — was not acceptable, and that the person in front of her knows it. A family member who has been made to feel invisible for nine hours is not in a state to receive clinical information until someone names what happened to her.

Then the concrete update:

“Lo que le puedo decir ahora mismo es esto: el corazón de su papá está latiendo, está respirando con un poco de ayuda de una máquina — eso es lo normal en las primeras horas después de esta cirugía, y la máquina no va a durar — y los cirujanos pudieron hacer los tres puentes que tenían planeados. Los tres. Eso es lo que salió bien: hicieron lo que vinieron a hacer.”

(What I can tell you right now is this: your father’s heart is beating, he is breathing with a little help from a machine — that is normal in the first hours after this surgery, and the machine is not permanent — and the surgeons were able to do the three bypasses they had planned. All three. That is what went well: they did what they came to do.)

Then the honest uncertainty, framed as information, not alarm:

“Lo que no le puedo decir todavía es cómo va a estar mañana. La primera noche después de esta cirugía es cuando el equipo está más pendiente — hay cosas que pueden pasar en las primeras doce horas que los médicos necesitan ver y responder rápido. Le digo eso no para asustarla — es para que sepa por qué lo van a estar vigilando de cerca esta noche. Es porque esta cirugía es grande, y la primera noche siempre la tomamos en serio.”

(What I cannot tell you yet is how he will be tomorrow. The first night after this surgery is when the team is most watchful — there are things that can happen in the first twelve hours that the doctors need to see and respond to quickly. I tell you that not to frighten you — it is so you know why they will be watching him closely tonight. It is because this surgery is a major one, and the first night we always take seriously.)

Then the offer of contact:

“¿Puede verlo? Sí. Lo están preparando en la unidad de cuidados intensivos cardíacos. En unos veinte minutos, alguien de ese equipo va a venir a hablar con usted antes de que entre. Yo me quedo con usted hasta que lleguen.”

(Can you see him? Yes. They are setting him up in the cardiac intensive care unit. In about twenty minutes, someone from that team will come to talk with you before you go in. I will stay with you until they arrive.)

The last sentence — “yo me quedo con usted hasta que lleguen” — is a commitment of presence, not of information. Esperanza has been alone for nine hours and forty-five minutes. The nurse who stays with her for twenty more minutes does not need to say anything. She needs to be there.

The waiting room silence that preceded the update

The nine hours of silence in the waiting room is a separate problem from the update itself, and it deserves a separate conversation. In many cardiac surgery programs, a designated waiting room coordinator or a surgery nurse is supposed to check in with the family at regular intervals during a long case. When that check-in does not happen — when the three-to-four-hour estimate becomes six hours and then nine without word — the family member who finally receives an update is not in a neutral state. She is in a state of accumulated anxiety that the update has to work against.

The nurse who acknowledges the wait first — before the clinical information — does not just apologize. She changes the frame. Instead of the family member receiving information from an institution that has been ignoring her, she receives information from a person who acknowledges that she was ignored. The information lands differently.

In Spanish: “Usted lleva muchas horas esperando sin noticias. Eso es muy difícil, y lo entiendo.” (You have been waiting many hours without news. That is very hard, and I understand.) Two sentences. Before anything clinical. It takes ten seconds and it changes everything that follows.

“¿Por qué me duele más en el lado izquierdo si usted operó en el lado derecho?”

On post-operative day two, Rodrigo asked his cardiac surgery floor nurse something that had been bothering him since he arrived on the floor the day before. He had been told in pre-op — or he believed he had been told, which amounts to the same thing for clinical purposes — that one of his blocked arteries was “on the right side.” He had looked at an anatomy diagram on his phone and identified something on the right. He knew the surgeon had operated on that. And yet the pain he was feeling was worse on the left.

“¿Por qué me duele más en el lado izquierdo si la arteria bloqueada estaba en el lado derecho?”

(Why does it hurt more on the left side if the blocked artery was on the right side?)

This is not a difficult clinical question. The chest pain after a sternotomy is sternal pain — it radiates variably because the sternum runs down the center and the wires can create asymmetric pressure; the heart itself sits left of the midline, so pericardial inflammation (common in the first days after cardiac surgery) is often felt more on the left; and the chest tube insertion site — usually left-lateral — is its own distinct pain source. The answer the nurse gives is a short anatomy lesson. The failure mode is not giving one.

The answer that does not explain

“Eso es normal — es de la incisión.”

(That is normal — it is from the incision.)

This answer is true and unhelpful. Rodrigo already knows it is from the incision. His question was not “is this pain normal?” His question was “why is the pain on the wrong side?” The answer that tells him it is normal without explaining why it is on the left does not resolve the contradiction he is experiencing. He goes to sleep that night with an unexplained discrepancy between what he understood about his anatomy and what his body is telling him. An unexplained discrepancy in a post-cardiac-surgery patient at night is a seed of anxiety.

The anatomy explanation in plain Spanish

“Es una muy buena pregunta, y le voy a decir por qué. El dolor que siente en el pecho no viene del lugar donde estaban los bloqueos — eso puede ser confuso. El dolor viene del esternón — del hueso del centro del pecho que tuvieron que abrir para llegar al corazón. ¿Recuerda que le explicé eso?”

(That is a very good question, and I will tell you why. The pain you feel in the chest does not come from where the blockages were — that can be confusing. The pain comes from the sternum — from the center bone of the chest that they had to open to reach the heart. Do you remember me explaining that?)

If Rodrigo nods, she continues:

“El esternón está en el centro — aquí — pero el corazón está un poco hacia el lado izquierdo del esternón. Entonces cuando el cuerpo tiene inflamación después de la cirugía — que es parte normal de sanar — esa inflamación puede sentirse más en el lado izquierdo porque es donde el corazón está más cerca. Además, el tubo que pusieron para drenar — eso estaba en el lado izquierdo del pecho. Esa área también está sanando.”

(The sternum is in the center — here — but the heart sits a little toward the left side of the sternum. So when the body has inflammation after surgery — which is a normal part of healing — that inflammation can be felt more on the left side because that is where the heart is closest. Also, the tube they put in to drain — that was on the left side of the chest. That area is also healing.)

Then the important clinical framing:

“El dolor que siente en el pecho cuando respira y cuando se mueve — eso es lo esperado, y es el hueso. Lo que me quiero que reporte es si siente un dolor nuevo, diferente al que ya conoce — un dolor que no tiene que ver con el movimiento, o un dolor que de repente empeora mucho, o si siente que le cuesta respirar de una manera diferente a como lo ha tenido hasta ahora. Esos sí me los dice de inmediato. El dolor del hueso y del esternón — ese lo manejamos.”

(The pain you feel in the chest when you breathe and when you move — that is expected, and it is the bone. What I want you to report to me is if you feel a new pain, different from the one you already know — a pain that has nothing to do with movement, or a pain that suddenly gets much worse, or if you feel that it is harder to breathe in a different way than you have had until now. Those you tell me immediately. The bone and sternum pain — that we manage.)

This answer does three things: it resolves the anatomical contradiction (the pain is left-sided because the heart and the drain site are left-sided, not because something is wrong on the left); it distinguishes expected sternal pain from reportable new symptoms; and it gives Rodrigo a decision rule — a clear way to know when the pain he is experiencing is within the expected range and when it requires escalation. A patient who has a decision rule does not need to ask the same question again at 2 AM.

When the question is really about the anatomy of the blockage

Sometimes the question about the left side versus the right side is the surface of a deeper confusion: the patient does not understand that the coronary arteries are arteries that supply the heart muscle, not the heart chambers. He may believe — based on the diagram he saw, or the phrase “right side of the heart” that someone used — that the surgery involved the right chamber or the right ventricle, and that the left is therefore unrelated.

If Rodrigo’s confusion is at this level, the nurse can offer a simple frame without a full cardiology lecture:

“Las arterias que estaban bloqueadas son las que corren por fuera del corazón — son como las mangueras que traen sangre al músculo del corazón. Están en todos lados del corazón — izquierda, derecha, adelante, atrás. La cirugía que le hicieron a usted fue en esas mangueras de afuera, no en las cámaras de adentro.”

(The arteries that were blocked are the ones that run on the outside of the heart — they are like the hoses that bring blood to the heart muscle. They are on all sides of the heart — left, right, front, back. The surgery you had was on those outside hoses, not on the chambers inside.)

The frame of “mangueras de afuera” (outside hoses) is not a cardiology explanation. It is the map Rodrigo needs to understand why the pain is not coming from where he thought the surgery was.

Sternal precautions in plain Spanish: when “no levante más de diez libras” does not answer the question he is actually asking

Rodrigo was discharged on post-operative day five. He received a discharge packet — in English — that included a list of sternal precautions. His nurse went through the list. No lifting more than ten pounds for six weeks. No driving for six weeks. Do not push yourself up from a chair or bed using your arms. Hold a pillow against your chest when you cough. Call if you have fever, redness at the incision, increasing chest pain, or palpitations.

Rodrigo listened. Then he said:

“¿Pero por qué no puedo manejar? Si los brazos están bien.”

(But why can’t I drive? If my arms are fine.)

The instruction said six weeks. He heard six weeks. He did not understand six weeks. He would go home and, in three weeks when he felt well enough and bored enough, he would get in his car. Not because he was reckless. Because the instruction did not give him a reason he could hold.

The mechanism, not the rule

“Señor Salcedo — tiene razón. Sus brazos están bien. El motivo de no manejar no tiene que ver con sus brazos. Tiene que ver con el esternón.”

(Mr. Salcedo — you are right. Your arms are fine. The reason not to drive has nothing to do with your arms. It has to do with the sternum.)

“Ese hueso fue cortado y cerrado con alambres. En los próximos seis semanas, ese hueso se está uniendo de nuevo — como cuando uno se fractura algo y el hueso tiene que soldarse. Mientras ese hueso está soldando, ciertos movimientos pueden moverlo y retrasar la sanación.”

(That bone was cut and closed with wires. In the next six weeks, that bone is fusing back together — like when someone breaks something and the bone has to knit. While that bone is knitting, certain movements can shift it and delay the healing.)

“Manejar es el ejemplo perfecto. Sus brazos pueden girar el volante — no hay problema. El problema es que en la carretera pasan cosas que uno no puede predecir. Si tiene que frenar de golpe, o si alguien le corta el paso y usted hace un movimiento rápido con el volante, o si algo le pasa mientras maneja que lo hace apretar los brazos fuerte — ese tipo de reacción rápida puede mover el esternón mientras está sanando. Seis semanas es el tiempo que ese hueso necesita para estar lo suficientemente sólido para que esas reacciones no le hagan daño. No es que usted no pueda manejar. Es que el esternón todavía no está listo.”

(Driving is the perfect example. Your arms can turn the steering wheel — no problem. The issue is that on the road, things happen that you cannot predict. If you have to brake hard, or if someone cuts you off and you make a quick movement with the wheel, or if something happens while you are driving that makes you grip your arms hard — that kind of fast reaction can shift the sternum while it is healing. Six weeks is the time that bone needs to be solid enough that those reactions will not hurt it. It is not that you cannot drive. It is that the sternum is not ready yet.)

The same mechanism applies to the lifting restriction:

“Lo mismo con levantar cosas pesadas. No es que sus brazos no puedan — sí pueden. Es que cuando uno levanta algo de más de diez libras, el pecho se aprieta y hace fuerza de una manera que puede afectar cómo está sanando el esternón. Diez libras es el límite que los cirujanos ponen para que ese hueso no tenga que trabajar mientras está sanan.”

(Same with lifting heavy things. It is not that your arms cannot — yes they can. It is that when you lift something over ten pounds, the chest tightens and exerts force in a way that can affect how the sternum is healing. Ten pounds is the limit the surgeons set so that bone does not have to work while it is healing.)

How to get out of bed and off a chair — the movement instruction that has to be demonstrated

The sternal precaution that is most often violated in the first week home is not the lifting limit and not the driving restriction. It is the instruction about how to get out of bed. Patients who have been told “don’t use your arms to push yourself up” go home and, the first morning, push themselves up from the bed exactly the way they have done it for sixty-seven years.

This instruction needs to be demonstrated before it is given verbally. But the verbal instruction in Spanish, paired with a demonstration, is:

“Le voy a mostrar cómo levantarse de la cama sin lastimar el esternón. Lo importante es no usar los brazos para empujarse. Así: primero doble las rodillas. Después ruédese hacia el lado — hacia la derecha o la izquierda, lo que le sea más fácil. Cuando esté de lado, deje que las piernas bajen al piso por su propio peso, y usé las piernas para levantarse, no los brazos. Si necesita apoyarse, apóyese en la rodilla, no en el colchón con el brazo derecho. ¿Puede intentarlo ahora y yo lo veo?”

(I am going to show you how to get up from the bed without hurting the sternum. The important thing is not to use your arms to push yourself. Like this: first bend your knees. Then roll to the side — to the right or left, whichever is easier for you. When you are on your side, let your legs drop to the floor by their own weight, and use your legs to stand, not your arms. If you need to support yourself, support on your knee, not on the mattress with your right arm. Can you try it now while I watch?)

The last question — “¿puede intentarlo ahora y yo lo veo?” — is the quality check. A patient who can demonstrate the technique in front of the nurse before discharge is a patient who will remember it at 6 AM at home when he does not have anyone watching. A patient who only heard the verbal instruction is a patient who will do it wrong.

The pillow instruction and when to call

The instruction to hold a pillow against the chest when coughing is one that many post-cardiac surgery patients actually use — because coughing after a sternotomy is painful enough that they are highly motivated to do anything that makes it less so. The instruction in Spanish:

“Cada vez que tosa en casa, agarre esta almohada — o un cojín, lo que tenga — y apóyela fuerte contra el pecho. Así — dos manos, firme. Eso ayuda a sostener el esternón mientras tose y hace que duela menos. No va a dañar nada — es lo que recomendamos siempre.”

(Every time you cough at home, grab this pillow — or a cushion, whatever you have — and hold it firmly against your chest. Like this — two hands, firm. That helps support the sternum while you cough and makes it hurt less. It will not hurt anything — this is what we always recommend.)

When to call, in a form Rodrigo can actually use:

“Hay cuatro cosas que si le pasan, llama al cirujano ese mismo día. Primera: si le sale fiebre — si el termómetro marca 38 grados o más (o 100.4 en Fahrenheit). Segunda: si ve que la incisión del pecho o la incisión de la pierna se está poniendo roja, o sale algo, o huele diferente. Tercera: si el dolor del pecho empeora mucho de repente — no el dolor del hueso que ya conoce, sino un dolor nuevo diferente. Y cuarta: si siente que el corazón late muy rápido o de manera irregular. Si alguna de esas cuatro le pasa de noche y le parece urgente, no espera — va a urgencias.”

(There are four things that if they happen to you, you call the surgeon the same day. First: if you get a fever — if the thermometer reads 38 degrees or more (or 100.4 in Fahrenheit). Second: if you see that the chest incision or the leg incision is getting red, or something is coming out, or it smells different. Third: if the chest pain gets much worse suddenly — not the bone pain you already know, but a new different pain. And fourth: if you feel your heart beating very fast or irregularly. If any of those four happens at night and seems urgent to you, do not wait — go to the emergency room.)

Rodrigo was discharged on Friday. His daughter Esperanza drove him home to East Los Angeles. On Tuesday afternoon — four days after discharge — he called the cardiac surgery office. The incision on his leg was getting red. The nurse asked him to come in the next morning. He came in. It was a superficial wound edge separation — not infected, managed with local wound care. He went home the same day. He did not wait three days to see if it got better on its own. He called because the nurse had given him a specific instruction about redness and he had a specific instruction he could match to a specific observation.

Frequently asked questions

ClinicaLingo builds 10-minute clinical-Spanish scenarios for working US nurses, EMTs, PAs and front-desk staff. Try 29 free scenarios — no login required — or download the free 50-phrase PDF for tomorrow’s shift. Also see: Spanish for ICU nurses, Spanish for progressive care nurses, Spanish for perioperative nurses, End-of-life communication in Spanish, Informed consent in Spanish, Family as witness, not interpreter, and the full blog index.