--- title: Hospitals, operations and serious illness — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Hospitals, operations and serious illness», a lesson of the adult life course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: When someone in the family is ill or hurt, grown-ups use special hospital words that can sound frightening, but most of them --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/21-hospitals-operations-and-serious-illness/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Adult life](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/) / Hospitals, operations and serious illn… # Hospitals, operations and serious illness Lesson 21 of the adult life course of Mova's primary school: 18 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/adult-life/21-hospitals-operations-and-serious-illness/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/21-hospitals-operations-and-serious-illness/0/) — When someone in the family is ill or hurt, grown-ups use special hospital words that can sound frightening, but most of them have plain meanings. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/21-hospitals-operations-and-serious-illness/1/) — A&E is the emergency part of a hospital, an operation is a surgeon fixing something inside the body, and "put under" means a deep, safe sleep so nothing hurts. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/21-hospitals-operations-and-serious-illness/2/) — Picture a kitchen in Manchester: Mum yawns over her toast and says, "We had to take Grandad to A&E last night." He had a pain in his chest; the doctors checked him, and he is staying in for a few days. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/21-hospitals-operations-and-serious-illness/3/) — Some illnesses, like cancer, are serious and take months of treatment, and some checks, like scans and tests, are only there to be careful. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/21-hospitals-operations-and-serious-illness/4/) — Waiting is a big part of hospitals: waiting to be seen, waiting for results, waiting for visiting hours. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/21-hospitals-operations-and-serious-illness/5/) — Grown-ups often feel worried and short-tempered while they wait. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/21-hospitals-operations-and-serious-illness/6/) — A&E means Accident and Emergency, the hospital department for sudden, serious illness and injuries, open all day and all night. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/21-hospitals-operations-and-serious-illness/8/) — An operation, or surgery, is when a surgeon fixes or removes something inside the body; afterwards the person needs rest and must not lift heavy things. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/21-hospitals-operations-and-serious-illness/9/) — "Put him under" means giving a general anaesthetic, a medicine that makes you sleep deeply so you feel no pain; a specialist doctor watches you the whole time. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/21-hospitals-operations-and-serious-illness/10/) — A local anaesthetic only numbs one part of the body, and the person stays awake. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/21-hospitals-operations-and-serious-illness/11/) — Hospitals limit visiting hours and the number of visitors so patients can rest and doctors and nurses can work. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/21-hospitals-operations-and-serious-illness/12/) — Cancer is when some cells in the body grow out of control and form lumps that can spread; you cannot catch it from someone. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/21-hospitals-operations-and-serious-illness/13/) — Chemo, short for chemotherapy, is strong medicine that kills cancer cells; it can make people very tired and sick for months, and many people recover. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/21-hospitals-operations-and-serious-illness/14/) — Some cancer treatments make hair fall out because they attack fast-growing cells; the hair usually grows back after treatment. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/21-hospitals-operations-and-serious-illness/15/) — Blood pressure is how hard the blood pushes on the walls of the blood vessels; high blood pressure has no symptoms but strains the heart over years. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/21-hospitals-operations-and-serious-illness/16/) — Tablets, less salt and more exercise can lower high blood pressure, and measuring it only feels like a tight squeeze. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/21-hospitals-operations-and-serious-illness/17/) — Results of blood tests and scans can take days or weeks, and waiting for them is often the most worrying part; most results come back fine. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/21-hospitals-operations-and-serious-illness/18/) — A scan looks inside the body; "just to be on the safe side" means the doctor is being careful, and most scans find nothing serious. - ← previous: [Going to the doctor and the chemist](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/20-the-doctor-and-the-chemist/) - next →: [Sore backs, glasses and feeling low](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/22-sore-backs-glasses-and-feeling-low/) - ↑ back to [Adult life](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/)