Supersized

For the past month or two, the perpetually gaunt Bev has been fussing that her “pants have been feeling tight” and that she has had “a bloated sensation” after every meal. I suggested to her that perhaps she was at long last gaining weight and was just not used to the extra padding in her midsection. She adamantly disagreed with me and babbled on and on about how she has worn the same few pairs of pants for the past twenty years - um, eewww! She was very obstinate that, although she tries, she simply CANNOT GAIN WEIGHT. Never. Ever. I explained to her that since she has been at the assisted living place, she has eaten three meals every day, and she never, ever did that before. And she gobbles down bags of candy and cookies on a weekly basis, and she never, ever did that before, either. I implied that she was merely getting chubby, but she insisted that something hideous was obviously wrong with her because her stomach never used to bulge out like it currently does. Bear in mind that when she lived at her house, meals consisted of coffee for breakfast, soup broth for lunch, and a cookie or two for dinner. If that.

Well, Bev grumbled to the on-staff physician at the assisted living place so much that he finally told her to go ahead and see a gastrointestinal specialist. Jim made Bev an appointment and took her to the gastro guy last week. One of Bev’s numerous Alzheimer’s gaffes for that day occurred when she wrote the year as “1988” on the forms she was filling out at the doctor’s office. Jim’s gaffe for that day occurred when he actually let her fill out her own paperwork. Anyway, when Bev first entered the hospital back in July, she weighed 79 pounds, and proceeded to lose weight while she was a patient there. She looked skeletal, and, trust me; skeletal is not a good look. Miraculously, she weighed in at 98 last week! So, my previously scrawny, emaciated mother-in-law is finally getting some meat on her bones, yet she is still baffled as to why her size extra-small sweats seem tight. I will just have to purchase some larger pants for her (a size small this time, perhaps?), and humor her that she simply needed a few new pairs of sweats to replace her decades-old ones. Then she can continue complaining how she simply never, ever gains weight, but, gee, at least her pants don’t feel tight anymore and that bloated sensation is gone. Maybe she will even give up the idea that her fleshy tummy is the result of some horrid disease. Hey, lady, welcome to the world of the flabby.