One Saturday morning, Grandma handed me her grocery list.  At the top she had written:  “Go to the pharmacy and get some bismuth powder.”  Pharmacist number one didn’t know anything about bismuth powder.  Pharmacist number two looked it up in his reference book.  The only bismuth he found was listed as one of many ingredients in a popular antacid.  When I told Grandma that pharmacies no longer carried bismuth powder, she gave a heavy sigh of exasperation and said, “Mama used it for little scratches on all her babies.”  I realized she meant her own mother and the “babies” she referred to were her own nine younger brothers and sisters who had once been babies more than seventy years ago.  Seems it used to be an easy thing to get a little bismuth when you needed it.

Grandma often had me seek out one of her sure-fire home remedies:  oil of citronella for mosquitoes, boric acid solution for a sore eye, Epsom salts for an infected cut.  She used these as her own personal duct tape for holding physical reality together.  When things did fall apart, we headed for the hospital emergency room.  That happened so often Grandma referred to a certain physician there as “her” emergency room doctor.  This was where we found ourselves one weekend when, after puttering in the garden, Grandma collapsed.  After a bunch of tests, her favorite doctor sent her home with orders to rest and not spend two hours at a time outdoors in the heat.

After Grandma’s cardiologist reviewed the emergency room report, he summoned us to his office.  “Your iron is dangerously low,” he said to Grandma.  “Have you been taking the vitamins I gave you?”  Grandma told him that since she drank a daily supplement plus soy milk, she had decided not to take his vitamins.  She explained that she didn’t want to be “over-vitamized.” 

The cardiologist banged his forehead several times with the palm of his hand, leaned forward and asked gently, “Tell me, Mrs. Smith, just which medical school did you graduate from?”

She laughed and shot back, “Obviously, not a very good one.”  I decided not to mention the vinegar and honey concoction she drank every night.  He sent us away with orders to take the vitamins, plus some iron tablets.

We tread a delicate balance between home remedies and the marvels of modern medicine.  I can only hope that some day thirty years from now, my own children will humor me by making futile searches for ginseng, garlic tablets and St. John’s Wort in some third millennium pharmacy.  Every generation has its own brand of snake oil.  The cold, hard truth is that bodies are like cars.  Eventually they both fall apart no matter how much we touch up the paint or what brand of oil we use.

Later that same day, while I waited in line at the pharmacy to pick up prescription refills, idle thoughts crossed by brain.  Grandma had a keen mind in a frail body that continued to function in spite of frequent dire medical predictions.  I wondered what kind of shape Grandma’s modern day shamans might be in if they were lucky enough to see their eighty-fifth year.