Books We Love Insider Blog: #86YearsYoung

Thursday, November 16, 2017

M.R.I.s and Martinis, by J.C. Kavanagh

Voted Best Young Adult book 2016

I've written before about the clicks and clacks of aging joints. My joints. And how I regularly convince myself that age is only a number... only a number. But the clicking and recurring pain in my joints, especially my shoulder, reminds me of that age number (DANG) and so at the insistence of my doctor, I agreed to an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging).

Have you been the subject of an MRI scan - the technique using magnetic devices and radio waves to generate images of internal components in your body? No? Then let me provide an insight.

Don't.

Unless you like:
a) lying in a closed coffin
b) pretending you're dead
c) the sound of seven trillion hammers simultaneously clanking around your head

So... I don't like any of the above. I wish someone had told me what to expect from this medical torture chamber. If I had known the discomforts involved, I would have had a martini. Or seven. That's my other insight to you readers: martini before MRI.

*Use caution when martini-ing before MRI-ing. No driving!

86 years young

It is with great delight that I share the news of me Mather's 86th birthday celebration - behind the wheel of a motorized vehicle! Well.... scooter! OK.... electric buggy! Just for fun, I convinced her to jump on an electric buggy at the local grocery store. She was only on it for a few minutes, back and forth a few metres, but oh, was she thrilled. It's a big accomplishment. Me Mather never obtained her driver's license. Can you believe it? Not even in Ireland, where she was born and raised. The last time me Mather drove a motorized vehicle was in 1949. She was 18 years old and attempting to learn the standard-transmission process. While grinding gears and jerking forward, her mother cowered in the back seat, Rosary in hand, muttering "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, save us!"

Shortly after, me Mather decided that driving was just not her cup of tea. Those were the days.