When people are ill they usually go to the doctor. The doctor examines them. Patients are usually asked to strip to the waist, so as the doctor could check their lungs and heart. The doctor listens to the patient’s lungs and heart with a stethoscope. The patient is asked to take a deep breath, then to hold it and not to breathe. Then the patient is asked to open his mouth and the doctor looks down the patient’s throat. Sometimes the doctor checks the patients blood pressure. It can be a hundred to seventy for young people and a hundred and twenty eight for middle-aged people. The normal blood pressure for old people is a hundred and forty to ninety. Then the doctor makes the patient lie down and he checks the patient’s stomach. Sometimes the patient is asked to shut his eyes and put his feet together and the doctor hits the patient’s knees to test his reflexes. Sometimes the doctor even measures the patient’s height and checks his weight.
If the doctor prescribes some medicine, people shoulg take the prescription to the nearest chemist’s and have it made up there. The chemist usually warns us if the particular medicine is meant for internal or external use.
One can have some medicine also without a doctor’s prescription. In such a case we can ask the chemist for some recommendation on how to take the medicine. We get some medicine in the form of mixtures, injections, drops, pills, tablets, and ointment. We can obtain adhesive tape, bandage, plaster and cotton wool at the chemist’s.
When people have been laid up with something serious or if they are seriosly injured in an traffic accident or sports activities they are taken to hospital. People are taken to hospital to be operated on, too. I have been to hospital only as a visitor when my grandfather broke his leg.
The most serious problems at present are presented by cancer and by heart trouble. In Latvia 55,5% people die from heart illnesses and 16,2% from cancer. The average life expectancy in Latvia is about 65 years in favour of women.…
