To get irritated at my mum's excitement over people's illnesses?

[CoolPatootieTango]

My mum seems to get really excited and obsessive about people being ill. Everytime I ring her she runs down a list of all the people who she knows to be currently suffering illness. The conversation goes something like :

me: "Hi mum, how are you?"
mum: "oh hi, did you know about Sharon?"
me: "yep"
mum: "no I'll tell you the full story, she went to doctors and ..... (20 minutes later) ... and did I tell you about Roger from down the road? "

and on and on she goes until in the end she's spent an hour talking about people's illnesses and I've not got a word in edgeways.

At the moment, her husband is unwell so this is her new obsession. I called this morning to ask how he was and she went on and on about that for an hour or so - eventually I managed to say "I started my new job yesterday" and she said "oh, how did it go?" - I just started to tell her before she interupted with "do you think they'll take his stitches out tomorrow?" ffs

W eventually got around to discussing my new job again before she squeals "OH!!! The nurse is here!!!! I have to , bye!"

AIBU to find it irritating??

One time I was suffering with bowel impactation and she called to see how I was - I was half way through my one sentance answer when she butted in with "oh I've had terrible stomach ache today you know ... " and then waffled on about herself for the next hour whilst I'm in agony on the other end of the phone!

DH has just said he has a migraine and thinks he's coming down with something. I was halfway through reading this thread and I'm not sure my "Oh dear" sounded genuine .

I have to say I'm loving this thread, my mums exactly the same has been all her life, her best ever has to be when friend of dads passed away and in ireland in most cases bodies are still "laid out" for all to see, anyway mum couldn't go cos she was wait for it "unwell" , she really must have been cos she loves going to funerals, but when dad got back and walked in and sat down and my mothers first question was"how did he look"?...my sister and I fell around the room laughing

My gran is like this.
She goes to her doctor about twice a week.
She tells us every detail of his family life in a stalker like way 'Dr. Smith is having all his family over for christmas, even his daughter and the new baby. She's bringing the home made gravy because she likes hers better than his. They are buying their turkey from Waitrose this year' and so on.
We think the doctor must be getting fed up of her made up illnesses. We think he has a tube of Smarties under his desk and gives her a few different coloured ones each week to cure her skin disease, food allergy or whatever it might be.

Shagmund I also have to multitask when I am speaking on the phone to my mother. Usually Mumsnetting or washing dishes.

She tells such intricate involved stories about people I don't know and don't care about... but I have learnt to make rudimentary "hmm" and "oh yes? noises because if she suspects for a moment that I am not giving this incredible news about her acquaintance friend's ex husband's mother's illness, tribulation or imminent death my full undivided attention she gets very displeased and starts off on one about how she is always interested in everyone else's news but noone listens to her, properly and with empathy.

She also has a memory like an elephant and cannot understand why I do not remember trivial events from years past or who my best friend at six's neighbour's granddaughter was.

I wonder if it is something about our mother's generation of women which predisposes them to be like this or whether it is age related and we are also one day doomed to be nosy busybody curtain twitchers who know everyone's business and bore our progeny stupid with the detail of it...

Not my mum but my geography teacher at school, who indulged in this sort of thing but on a mass scale. Our entire Year 9 geography curriculum was about Natural Disasters, particularly Volcanoes and Earthquakes. We had to learn the details of particular earthquakes/volcanic eruptions in an encyclopaedic way, by rote - where, when, epicentre, richter scale, type of lava, and above all, How Much Damage and How Many People Dead.

This was the year of the Kobe earthquake. The next geography lesson, teacher practically ran into the class, shaking with excitement. "Year 9 - HAVE you seen the NEWS? There's been a HUGE earthquake in Japan. At least 5,000 people may be dead!!"

We were old enough realise at the time that this was pretty distasteful.