The patient was an elderly Chinese immigrant with a history of gastric cancer. She had come into the emergency room in New York City complaining of abdominal pain.
“Tung, tung?” I asked in my laughable Cantonese.
She pinwheeled a hand over her belly. “Pain everywhere.”
When I pressed on her abdomen, she grimaced. But she had no fever or evidence of peritonitis, an inflammation of the membrane that lines the abdominal cavity.
“How long?” I asked her English-speaking daughter.
