Phoebe Kate

I have occasionally mused in this blog on the idiosyncrasies of my 92-year-old mother-in-law who lives next door to us.  This lady isn’t suffering from senility.  No, not by a long shot.  She simply chose to stop keeping up with the frantic pace of modern life a long, long time ago… oh, say sometime back in the 1930s.  For her, Shirley Temple will never stop being a curly-haired cutie singing ”On the Good Ship Lollypop,” Cary Grant and Clark Gable will be forever young and dashing, and there’ll always be a Depression going on (works well with our economy at the present moment, at least.)

Well, for the last couple weeks, our Oldster has complained of “not feeling 100%.”  Sheesh!  As a nonogenarian (the official term for a person of 90), she’d be lucky to clock in at 50% on any given day, I’d think.  I’m a pentagenerian (look it up) and most days the best I can manage is around 75% – hell, I haven’t felt “100%” since I was 23, and even then it was more likely a very shaky and momentary 94.5%. 

Come on — be honest now.  Have you ever really felt 100%?   

Ha.  I thought so.

Anyway, my mother-in-law’s symptoms are so strange that we can’t figure out exactly how sick she is.  She has “funny feelings in her body.”  Where in her body?  “Ohhh, here and there.”  What kind of feelings?  Pain?  Ache?  “No, not an ache or pain.  Just — a sensation.” Uncomfortable?  “Not exactly — it’s just I’m aware of it.”  Aware of the mysterious it where?  “Oh, all over.  It moves around.”  And what does it feel like?  “Funny.  It feels funny.”

Obviously, we’re getting nowhere with this line of questioning.

Yesterday she called up to tell us that she could hear her voice in her ears when she speaks.  Whew, is that ever good news.  Hallelujah, she hasn’t gone deaf in the night!

Last week, she complained of a vague stomach problem — yeah, you guessed right.  It was that funny feeling again — not an ache, not a pain, not nausea, not vomiting, not indigestion or heartburn, not diarrhea, nothing that can be described by any word other than… well… you know.  To treat the condition, she wrapped her stomach up in a wool scarf.  It was 82 muggy degrees here that day.  I’m surprised she didn’t call that night to complain about a funny red rash all over her midsection. 

At any rate, you’ll be relieved to learn that funny feeling in her tummy has not affected her appetite in the least.  We thought she might be feeling too poorly for a Mother’s Day dinner.  Oh, silly us.  She came over, drank a stiff Scotch (”Go light on the water, dear!”), ate a 12-ounce bloody rare rib steak, a mountain of French fries, a pile of sliced tomatoes with vinaigrette dressing and 1/4 of a Oreo ice cream pie, washed down with half a bottle of cabernet sauvignon.      

This morning, she called us with the diagnosis of her peculiar affliction.  “I’m going to telephone my doctor immediately!” she announced in her most dramatic voice. ”I’ve got la grippe!”

Ooooooo-kay.  I’m not going touch this one, not even with that proverbial ten foot pole my mother-in-law constantly refers to.  However, I suspect that it will cause our rural Eastern NC family physician, Dr. Billy-Bob Something-or-other, to wonder why he didn’t take his old daddy’s advice and become a car salesman instead of going to that gol-durn, high falutin’ medical school upstate.

–phoebe kate