Quotes From Illiterate Patients
These examples are from Emory University

 

  1. Filling out forms, that's my main problem there. That’s why I bring somebody with me at all times.”
  2. “ I wouldnt’a knowed how to get here cause of my reading.  And I probably wind up in Orange County somewhere.  Yes, because I did, you know, that did happen to me one night….  If you don’t know how to read, and you try to drive out here by yourself, you are in trouble, you know?  That’s why I brought him along (points to friend).”
  3. “ I came down to Grady to get a prescription and they was supposed to be givingme some pain pills, some Motrin, and the prescription was wrote out wrong, and I was taking high blood pressure pills.  And I went into a reaction.  I really got pissed off cause I couldn’t read.  I didn’t know what I was taking.  I started feeling stuff crawling on me and stuff, you know, messing with my nerves.  And that’s when I asked my sister what was it.  She said, “Dog, you can’t read!” Cause, see, everybody—I was the oldest in my family, and all of them figured I could read.”
  4. “ They gave me some medicine that wasn’t for me.  I took it.  All night I couldn’t sleep.  I felt bad, my head hurt for about 3 days…it was for asthma.  And I took it because I felt sick to my stomach. …I almost died, I tell you, because I didn’t know how to read.”
  5. “Yeah, see my Dilantins are white and pink. And these other little pills, they’re white and pink too.  But, see, I know which size…No, they’re pink and white.   Then, my itching pills are pink and white, and my Dilantins are white and pink.”
  6. “ I had some papers, but I didn’t know they were prescriptions and I walked around for a week without my medication.  I was ashamed to go back to the doctor, but a woman saw the papers I had and told me they were prescriptions.  It’s bad to not know how to read.  [Then after getting the medicine] I had to come back and ask about how to take them because I was urinating too much.  They told me I was taking double the medication I was supposed to.  I had two bottles and I was taking one from each bottle, but it turned out they were the same medication.  But since I don’t know how to read, I didn’t know.”
  7. “Why I didn’t  want to tell her that, because I feel… I feel like I didn’t come here exactly for that…And the reading, I feel like its something she didn’t care about hearing.  She would’ve listened but it ain’t something I really would…I didn’t come to really discuss something like that with her…. Maybe, if I feel like it would’ve helped me in some ways, maybe I would’ve.”
  8. “ Well, like me, when I got shot, see, they had “consent” and a lot of paperwork that I had to do.  See, it’s the thing that, really, I couldn’t give consent.  See, because I was shot and they thought it had damaged one of the main arteries running to my heart, and uh, they was telling me about that they were gonna do open heart surgery.  Yeah, I’m tryin’ to figure all this mess out…”
  9. “ What I feel, in my case, if there could be a person that could talk like us, and be kinder, and to ask us if we can read or offer to fill it out, and with a smile, so we feel the person supports us.  But if we see their hard faces, how could we ask for help to fill out the form?”
  10. “ Anything I had to learn, I could learn it.  But I learned it the old fashioned way.My granddaddy told me, “I’ll show you this one time and one time only.’ And I can look at you do something once and I will be able to do it.”