A Bad Bout of Hypochondriatis

Savage Chickens found HERE

 

To say that my granny was obsessed with her health throughout her 80 years on this earth would probably be an understatement. For most of the time I knew her, she was never a very well person and she was on a potentially lethal cocktail of drugs for a multitude of ailments. In her last days, she was really ill with a failing heart, and was almost bent double from osteoporosis, which I now realise was thanks to her not getting HRT after a full hysterectomy aged just 34. But hey, it was the 1950s and what did they know?

I think my granny was actually quite a lonely person, and her preoccupation with illnesses filled the void and earned her some much craved attention. By the time my grandfather passed away and granny came to live with us in the mid 1980s, she had only two friends left in the country...all the others had either emigrated and lost touch or popped their clogs. One of those two friends was a former Follies dancer, now almost crippled with arthritis and not able to move out of her care home, but still lively in mind and spirit. The other old dear was quite mobile, but shared my granny’s passion for all things relating to bad health. When the two of them got together, they would talk for hours about ill they had been, were currently and expected to be in the near future.

I reckon you can talk yourself ill.

One day, my granny had been to the doctor for her monthly check-up....always a bit of a highlight for someone so keen on discussing her own health. She came home in particularly high spirits that day and announced that the doctor had told her she had malaria. We were puzzled...sure malaria is rife in Zimbabwe, but not in the capital city where we lived....and definitely not during the dry season (and the dust bowl pretending to be a garden was a bit of a giveaway that the rains had yet to arrive).

My granny was adamant she had a tropical fever: “I feel all hot one minute and cold the next!”. Naturally concerned, my mom phoned the doctor to confirm. He was as astonished as we were, “Malaria?! Well, she must have caught that between my office and home, as I’m treating her for arrhythmia!” In her haste to get to her doctor’s appointment that morning, my granny had forgotten to put in her hearing aid. Now it all made sense...

Could have been worse, I suppose...she could have gone to him suffering with a Glue-Ear, and come away telling everyone she had a bad case of diarrhoea...or even worse... gonorrhoea!

It’s been 10 years since my granny passed away. I wish I’d gotten to know her better, but I didn’t...as I was foolish and selfish in my youth and believed there were many better ways to spend my days than chatting to an old and (sometimes awkward) lady.

May she rest in peace and good health.