Episode 38 – Fanny McFox, Medically Trained and Emotionally Inflamed..

Fanny McFox and the Grocery List of Woe.

Where there’s a will, there’s a whinge (and possibly a repeat prescription).

They say every family has a character but we hit the jackpot with Fanny McFox, the undisputed queen of the chronic complaint and high priestess of the prescription pad. A trained nurse, mind you. Which means every ache comes with a Latin name, a diagnosis nobody asked for and a lecture about what you should be taking.

Fanny doesn’t write grocery lists, she composes medical dossiers. Her weekly shop looks like the prep list for an underfunded A&E:

One litre full-fat milk

Paracetamol (every brand, in case one’s on special).

A nerve tonic she swears by (it’s just wine in a vitamin bottle).

Saline spray ‘for emotional congestion’.

One tube of Deep Heat – never opened, only threatened.

A pack of those chewy vitamins she hands out like communion.

Sympathy, extra strength, preferably name-brand.

Something for ‘the inflammation caused by family stress’.

She struts through the aisles with a stethoscope still in her handbag ‘just in case’ diagnosing strangers and family alike with whatever condition just made the headlines on the health talk radio.

‘I’m not saying it is adrenal fatigue, but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t.’

We’re all too afraid to sneeze in front of her. She’ll have you half undressed and covered in Vicks before you finish saying ‘hay-fever’.

But ask her to carry a bucket of turf?
Suddenly her intercostals are inflamed, her L5 vertebra is ‘on the brink’ and her left kidney is ‘acting up’ (even though the right one was the one removed – never forget, she won’t let you).

And here’s the kicker – for all her ailments, she’s miraculously healthy when there’s a prescription perk in sight. She’s got a stash of samples at home that would make a pharmaceutical rep weep. You need a lozenge, she’s got ten – color-coded and sorted by mood.

Despite her endless litany of pains, sprains and real-or-imagined syndromes, Fanny McFox never forgets to collect everyone else’s scripts too – ‘just to make sure it’s the right brand’. The woman is practically running a one-woman dispensary from her front hall dresser.

And yet… if there’s drama brewing, she can jog up a driveway faster than an ambulance. Limping, of course but only after you’ve seen her climb the fence.

She says, ‘I’m not one for complaining’, which is of course, the starter pistol for a full-body performance review of her current condition, her neighbors cholesterol and the scandalous shortage of proper gauze these days.

But make no mistake: she’s cunning. Every groan, every prescription wave, every convenient flare-up… it’s all part of her grand, pharmaceutical puppet theatre. And we play along because we suspect the day she stops complaining is the day the earth might actually tilt.

Fanny McFox – nurse, martyr and pharmaceutical oracle – will almost certainly outlive us all, with a limp in one leg and a loyalty card for every chemist in the county.

Daily Lesson from Fanny McFox:
‘If you list your ailments before your groceries, you’ll never be asked to cook the dinner’.