At the risk of ethnocentrism...

It is a horrible experience to talk to your friend in Kaqchikel about his mother's fatal stroke and recognize his description as decorticate, then decerebrate, posturing.  

I know this speaks more to my linguistic incapability and to some latent Orientalism in me.  But still, it really was horrible.

My familiar friend, speaking in familiar words--and suddenly, I see the pathophysiology of a herniating brain.  

I did not explain to him what had happened to his mother's brain.  

I suppose it did not matter, either way.