My father Ben had two brothers, Richard and Keith.  Richard died in his mid-thirties of a massive heart attack (He was a heavy smoker), but Uncle Keith is still living as far as I know, and he never smoked.  Aunt Helen was the only sister of the group, and I think she was born after my dad, who was the eldest.

Aunt Helen married a rather different man and produce two children, Bobby and Peggy.  Bobby and I became friends, but I never got to know Peggy very much.  I remember Aunt Helen for her many ailments.

On Sunday afternoon, it was the custom of our family to all gather at Grandma’s and Grandpa’s home in South Gastonia.  Everyone came. Sometimes as many as thirty or more persons would come through their small home which was a converted mill village home, warm and cozy, owing to the oil furnace which sat in the living room, with chairs and couches scattered around for everyone to sit.

The children were supposed to play outside, for the most part, to keep the house from being too crowded, and most of them did, except for some reason, most Sundays I found myself sitting and listening to Aunt Helen.

She had a wicked sense of humor, which I liked, and except for dipping snuff all afternoon had no bad habits I could find, and most of all she loved to talk.  She talked about a lot of things, but the one subject which held my fascination for hours at a time was her bodily ailments.  Aunt Helen liked to discuss with anyone who would listen her various bodily ailments.  And as I was a good listener, she would wax and wane eloquent for hours about various things wrong with different parts of her body.  On reflecting back, she seems to relish the attention and for some reason I never thought this odd at all.

Aunt Helen has multiple ailments:  She was overweight, close to 300 pounds, so mostly she sat all the time.  In fact, as I recall, she rarely if ever left her chair in the afternoon.  She also had epilepsy, which at the time, I found a most fascinating disease as she described it, with all sorts of “fits” and “seizures” of one kind or another.  She also had migraine headaches, which I found she shared with my dad and also with me, so I felt an immediate bond on this account.

Aunt Helen was diabetic, and I think she took insulin, although I never saw her give herself any injection.  She especially liked RC Colas and Double Colas, which she would sent me to the store on Sunday afternoon to obtain at least one or two for her.  I did not know all this sugary drink was bad for her at the time, as she gleefully drank at least one or two each Sunday afternoon.  It seemed to me, Sunday afternoon was her “day off”, and so whatever rules as to eating applied on the other six days, somehow did not apply on Sunday, as it was “the Lord’s Day”, and on the Lord’s Day, she could eat and drink whatever she wanted.

(Just an aside, at my dad’s father’s house we got to play ball and other things on Sunday afternoon, but at my other Grandpa (my mother’s father) we did not. For him and all who abode in his home, Sunday was a day of rest and meditation on the Holy Scripture.  He allowed for us to visit relatives, but not to play ball, but somehow no one ever told him that while we visited relatives in Gastonia we also sometimes played ball and other games, owing I suppose to the fact my dad had been a star left-handed pitcher for the Gastonia Baseball league, which was a group of teams of amateur players who came out of the various mills and played, I understand, some really mean baseball. So you can imagine where we gathered on Sundays—at Grandpa’s home in Gastonia, as we got to play lots of games at his house.  Now my dad’s father was a conservative Southern Baptist and my mother’s father a conservative Southern Presbyterian.  For  some reason Presbyterians  did not play baseball on the Sabbath!)

Now back to Aunt Helen:  she had varicose veins in her legs, and really pudgy toes due to fluid building up in her feet.  She also had high blood pressure, and I suspect cholesterol problems, but in the 1960’s on the mill village in Gastonia, I am not sure anyone had even heard about cholesterol.  She also had fair skin, and I think she has a least one skin cancer removed, as had my dad.  My dad had rolled into the fireplace as a child and burned his right hand, and this is where the first melanoma came up in the center of his right hand, in his early 30s.

Of course, Aunt Helen had allergies and could not go outside much, and since she smoked cigarettes, she had emphysema, and my mother said she had depression too.  As I recall she also had a broken leg one time, but she never talked of that.

Now I bring you to the point of my story.  At the time, when I was about 8 years old and fascinated by the fact one woman, my Aunt Helen, could harbor so many ailments and diseases, I wondered to myself how such a thing was possible.  Since serving now in medicine as a physician, I now know why such a thing can happen.  Beside poor genetics, a poor life style, bad eating habits, cigarette smoking, snuff dipping, and overeating leading to obesity can certainly lead to many ailments in life including diabetes, heart disease and hypertension.  When Aunt Helen died of a ‘heart attack’, no one was really too surprised.  I do miss her wicked laugh, when she would lean her head back and laugh like a ban chi.

What then is the point of my story?  Well, now as a medical doctor, besides understanding more about the various disease states I have mentioned above, I now am prepared on a daily basis to meet Aunt Helen all over again.  She did not die, she simply multiplied.  And so day after day I see her walk through my clinic door.  The ailments are not always exactly the same, but the stories are all so similar.  Poverty, a rough lifestyle, a sorry husband, too many cigarettes and snuff, diabetes, obesity and hopelessness leading to despair.  All these things and more I witness now, again and again.

And so today, I remember my Aunt Helen.  Besides my mother, who worked as a laboratory technician in the hospital, Aunt Helen was my first instructor in medicine.  She exposed me to more human ailments than I ever imagined it were possible for one person to have.  And further, she prepared me to meet her and to care for her on a daily basis when I became a physician.  “Thank you!” my lovely Aunt Helen.  May you rest in peace and be comforted to know that your life has now blessed so many more by your teaching me about all your ailments and diseases.   And so, when I meet you coming into my clinic I know it is not so important to speak, but always first to listen, for Lord, you have so much you need to say!