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the number of times i heard people say 'oh my baby has got eczema too' and then show me a tiny patch of dry skin while my baby was oozing blood and gunk.
or the friend who every time she had a cough, had a chest infection.
Have you MET my mother? She gets a flu jab every year and complains that it hasn't worked if she gets the slightest sniffle. I came down with an awful attack of mastitis when nursing DD3. Oh yes, she said, when I told her, of course I had that REALLY BADLY once. I am adopted. She has never breastfed.
my nanna is the worst offender of this she is in her 80s has every ailment going farrrrrrr worse than anybody else-she nearly dies at least once a day could pass out 6 x a day and yet is in her 80s!!!!
I have a friend like that. She is forever making Drs appointment for stupid things and she even managed to catch flu from the flu jab. I tried to tell her she can't get it from the jab because it isn't a live vaccine but of course she is different!
And another mum i know has had chicken pox about 8 times!! And wouldn't keep her ds home when he had it.
"my nanna is the worst offender of this she is in her 80s has every ailment going farrrrrrr worse than anybody else-she nearly dies at least once a day could pass out 6 x a day and yet is in her 80s!!!!"
I would guess you were my cousin but my gran is in her 90s, and the poor thing has been poorly all her life
I think eczema is generally very misunderstood and is often used by people as a term for very dry skin.
What annoys me is when - after 9 long years - doctors still disbelieve me and dd2 when we say her eczema does not itch. They openly refuse to believe it and keep pointing out to me every time dd2 shifts in her seat or touches any part of her body.
I get annoyed when i try to explain my skin allergies and people say that oh yes they have a sensitive skin too and can only use hypoallergenic products (MIL anyone).
I mean - i only have to look at a none simple product and my skin goes red and itchy and i swell up all over and my skin on my face peels off and my finger nails literally rot off if i come into contact with some stuff.
my mother had pneumonia AGAIN and had some big procedure on her lung. when i asked her why she needed that, she just said, 'oh, well, because i have COPD.' wtf!?
my dad had prostate cancer and told me he just 'needed a procedure' about his elevated whatever-that-prostate-hormone is. i was living in denver at the time and was about to schedule a holiday in canada when my sister thankfully told me he was going in for a prostatectomy.
upwind i was telling my nanna over the phone about someone we know whos hving prostrate probs -yip she sid 'ive had that' when i said she couldnt have had she claimed she misheard me as her ears were hurting so badly
My auntie is the biggest hypochondriac in the world.
She hasn't worked in her life and now has everything in the book. Walks with a cane (cos she's too fat) wears really dark glasses (cos the sun irritates her eyes) it's bloody annoying listening to her grumble about the new thing that is wrong with her.
The flu thing really grates with me. People who struggle in to work and claim to have flu. No, if you had flu you wouldn't be able to get out of bed. I had real flu a few years ago and I could do nothing, not even read a magazine while lying shivering in my bed. <shudders at the memory>
Me: "Hi Mum, how are you?" Mum (in Ill croaky voice accompanied with ill-looking hang dog expression, a bit like Malcolm from the Vick's advert) "Oooh, I feel ever so rough, I've been up all night coughing, but I'll still go to work, because nobody will do any of the work that I do" <inhale, with snot sound effects>
Now, whenever DP and I feel ill, we do The Ill Voice and say "I feel poorly bad" a la my mother.
Something about mothers, Sheikh? Whatever anyone has/ has had, my mother always makes sure everyone knows without her saying it out loud that she has had far worse than anyone else. My father believes in the old verb "I am ill, you are unwell, he/she is a malingerer".
She will also harp on about it until the next bout of pseudo flu comes along
And she actuallty said one day "Oh you have a cold, well, you want to try being ME. I still have to go to work when I'm ill" (because of course, I sit on my fat harris when I get a sniffle )
I cannot hold the phone near my ear when my mum does her 'ill' voice. It grates on me so much. She is the most unsympathetic person I know, but does the best 'at deaths door with a mild cold' performance I have ever witnessed.
Love the sickly grannies- my mum is clearly in training for her eighties!
I have suffered all my life from severe eczema, and sometimes whenit is realy bad I make the mistake of complaining to a couuple of friends, who instantly have a VERY BAD PATCH !! WTF I am covered head to toe, and on the parts that aren't realy bad I have scars from when it was!!! It realy pisses me off!!
Sheik thats my nannas line 'you ought to be me'i try to be sympathetic but it really does drive me mad my ds1 had 7 teeth out the other week (ready for a brace)understandbly he was really washed out that day -''ohhhhhhh i know all about teeth ' she says 'i had 3 taken out in the 30s'......and whats worse is she claims she can predict illness too (she always knew someone had whatever terminal illness b4 the doctor whenb youve been ill all your life you learn how to pick up on it ) so now im frightened to see her in case she diagnoses me too!!!
I used to work in a call centre and for a while there was a worrying trend for sick day excuses getting lamer and lamer. The zenith of the lame excuse was when someone rang in sick with....... 24 hour ebola.
My mother is like this now, but I don't think she was as bad when she was younger, so I'm scared I'll go the same way.
She was last in hospital 10 years ago for about 8 days, but manages to bring it up in conversation still, which is embarassing if you are in company with people who have cronic conditions and are often hospitalised.
I tend to keep the visit short when I call and hear the "poor me voice". Drive me insane, and then I feel guilty if she is really unwell.
Ex used to try and make me be respectful and obedient by telling me that his mother was really ill, wouldn't go into detail, turns out she was only having a routine scan which I had had a few years ago myself
Har har What a drama queen he was.
Somehow everything about him, his family, his friends, his whole life really was exaggerated to immense and grand proportions. I'm not sure why he thought I would believe any of it after the first few times.
themildmanneredjanitor my aunt was severely disabled and blind (she had it inside her eyelids and it scratched her eyes) from eczema, so I'm with you on that. Migraines is also one of my pet hates as Mum suffers so badly from migraines that my dad/grandad have to stop A&E lumbar puncturing her because they think it's meningitis. She has to take beta blockers daily even though her blood pressure is naturally very low and she bad asthma, the migraines are more of a concern. But she refuses to ever be ill! Her asthma was so bad last week the GP wanted to put her on IV antibiotics but she refused to go to hospital. I didn't even know she was ill for a few days because she didn't see the need to tell me "I'm OK, I'm just a bit breathless, but I'll lie down for a bit and I'll be better soon"
RosaLuxembourg tell your mum that the flu jab isn't for this years strain!
themildmanneredjanitor one of my pet hates!
StealthPolarBear now I know why TD always ends up ill after me!
My grandma is another of the sick and dying. She has a marg tub she brought back from Canada (about 1.5 x A4 and 5cm deep) full of drugs. A lot of them she has to buy because she can't get her GP to prescribe She told her GP she can't walk at all, which is not true at all, but when she sees a bargain she can charge across a shop! Everything comes from her side, my deafness (it's actually jaundice, her's is deformity of the ear bone, mines been checked), asthma (see above re:mum) and When she heard about my autoimmune disease she said that did too because her cousin had a lot of miscarriages - the fact she is 1 of 12 and had 5 children herself, whereas my other grandmother lost two prem babies and only managed to have 2 children survive (also prem) could be a sign, but then, it doesn't need to have come from anywhere!
Aha, my 83yr old grandmother is terrible, emits little yelps when walking, wheezes dramatically, has a weak voice ready for maximum sympathy extraction.
Last Christmas:
Grandma, do you want Christmas pudding or trifle?
Christmas pudding with a little bit of trifle on top
What about your diabetes? (she isn't diabetic but claims she is)
Oh it's Christmas
She's fit and healthy, practically runs for a bargain, gardens (but ooh it's knocked her up), walks (each step is agony) and if ever has to RSVP, writes 'will probably be dead' on it.
Oh this is fantastic, my mum also does the "I'm so poorly" voice too! I have to sit there stifling giggles while she does it. She is also a medical programme addict - ER, Casualty, Holby - in fact dh reckons the only illness she really has is lazyarse-itis.
I will hold my hand up though to being horribly unsympathetic to illness, sometimes unfairly so. I once spent a week telling dh to snap out of it and no he didn't even need to see a doctor. I got a phone call at work to say an ambulance had been called to the doctors to take him to hospital - with pnuemonia ... oops.
But aren't people the other end of the spectrum worse?
My mum hasn't had a day off of work in the last 10 years. She is intolerant of women that scream for nothing during childbirth and thinks that asthma and eczema are made up diseases!
I do like her saying though:
Children get colds Men get flu Women get on with it!!!
Oh I forgot another of my mum's classics. We were watching something about CJD on TV and the narrator said something not at all alarmist about how anyone who ate beef in Britain in the Eighties and early Nineties was potentially at risk. My mother turned to me in horror and said: I could have that you know!!
I plan to be that sort of granny - just reminding everyone regularly that "it could be my last Christmas/birthday/trip to the shops/Sunday lunch, you know" so as to completely guilt trip my ungrateful family ...
lol at 24 hour ebola I also get annoyed at people who talk about flu when they mean bad cold - I have never had flu, the one time I assumed I had it I actually had meningitis!
By greenlawn on Fri 16-May-08 17:05:53 I plan to be that sort of granny - just reminding everyone regularly that "it could be my last Christmas/birthday/trip to the shops/Sunday lunch, you know" so as to completely guilt trip my ungrateful family ...
Everytime I call my Gran she asks when we will be coming to visit, and everytime I answer, sher responds with "well, I hope I'll still be here"
She has been saying it for as long as I can remember! Recently she had a mole removed, I think it was the highlight of her year, finally doctors took her seriously and did something!
upwind my nanna had to have her cataract done and she bought a whole new hospital wardrobe -in fact she was rather upset they sent her home the same day cos she had a new nightie and slippers to wear
The type that are half-dead by the time they seek medical help or the hypochondriac type with internet access.
I had a student once who came in and handed in a project whilst sweaty and pale. He told me he'd been vomitting all night and that he'd had a similar thing a few days earlier, but it had gone away after a day.
I told him to get to the GP.
He didn't.
He collapsed at home at 1AM and luckily his flatmates were awake and called an ambulance.
We went to the airport to pick up my grandparents once, they used to live in Canada and were having a holiday here.
We knew Grandad was recovering from an operation, can't remember what it was but was on one of his organs, but he'd been released the day before he flew. We were shocked then that he was pushing Grandma in a wheel chair! They came through, she jumped out of her chair and ran across to us She told us that if you're not in a wheelchair they expect you to carry your own bags ??? So... um... why not have Grandad in a wheel chair considering he'd had major abdominal surgery two days before???
They came through, she jumped out of her chair and ran across to us 
