Wisecracking Senior Finds Captive Audience During Doctors Visits

It's not easy being a patient. And I imagine it's especially difficult when you're a senior citizen - being poked, prodded, sliced and diced.

Over the past few months, my mother has had more than her share of medical tests. Often being the chauffeur, I've frequently found myself in examining rooms with her - a happenstance observer of the doctor/nurse/patient interaction. But the one question I come away with after every visit is - At what age do you get to say whatever you want to medical personnel?

Even with all her ailments, I'm envious of my mother. Because she has crossed the mysterious threshold in life where she can blurt out anything she wants to doctors and nurses and they simply tolerate it. And even laugh. And not only that, she's funnier than me. Even when she doesn't necessarily mean to be.

I remember when my grandfather grew ill in his later years - oh, how I wish now that I could have been a mouse in the corner of his numerous trips to examining rooms. But I do recall one instance while visiting him in the hospital after he had heart surgery. A young male nurse came into the room carrying a large plastic model of a heart. He had it in his head that he was going to give my grandfather a show-and-tell demonstration of how the heart works. My grandfather took one look at the kid and barked, "Get that thing outta here!" The nurse scurried out of the room, with, as I'm fond of telling the story, his heart in his hands.

My mother, being his daughter, though not as gruff, shares the same penchant for frankness. Though I've noticed of late, she has finally crossed that long-awaited enviable line of exclamation demarcation. And the best part is, often she's never previously met the unsuspecting recipients of her ripostes.

I only regret I haven't been there for all of the fun. My sister relayed the story that while she was accompanying my mother to a first-time visit with her spine doctor at the Mayo Clinic, the doctor took my mother's foot in his hand and told her to push her leg towards him as hard as she could. The doctor was squatting on the floor in front of her. She looked at the doctor blankly and said, "I hope you got a good hold on that, doc, because if you don't you're gonna be singing a few octaves higher."

The doctor laughed so hard he was unable to proceed with the test.

In another instance, while preparing for a spinal procedure, a male nurse was reading off an inventory of pain-related questions, one if which was, "Does your pain interfere with sexual pleasure?"

"I don't know," my widowed mother deadpanned. "It's been a while since I tried it."

And then there was the time my mother began reciting the full names of her four children to the cardiology nurse who was interviewing her. My two sisters and I were in the examining room with her but had been talking amongst ourselves, but I was listening with one ear.

I stopped talking for a second and interrupted mom. "Oh, good, you're giving her our names for release of information?"

"No," she quipped. "The nurse asked me if I had ever been abused and I said 'yes'. Then she asked me 'by whom?'"

My mom chuckled heartily. This former social worker, not so much.

That was the same day the nurse had my mom wait a moment before stepping on the scale to be weighed. "I have to get it down to zero first," the nurse said, fiddling with the scale.

"Can you put it below zero?" my mom jested.

Although most of mom's one-liners are welcome, tension-relieving oases bursting out of the solemn atmosphere of a medical setting, she's just as comfortable telling it like it is in situations that aren't so funny. Like the time a rough ox of a nurse unapologetically dropped her onto an examination table while she had a cracked vertebra. The pain was excruciating, and, as my mother tells the story, when it was all over, she turned to the nurse and said matter-of-factly, "You need to find a different job."

But then, so does my mom. As a stand-up.