Too Many Cooks

Love my family, I really do.

But the problem with really large families is the tendency to overreact over the smallest of issues. Seriously. Aided by the technological power of the internet, molehills are magnified into the Himalayas in the blink of an eye.

A black sheep's ignominious transfer to another school generated an entire week's discussion. My second cousin's totally uneventful C-section spawned dozens of text messages and possibly a twice the number of emails. The fall of my grand-aunt merited a webpage detailing her shocking tumble down two steps of ladder ( with various CSI interpretations ), the hysterical reaction of the cousins attending and her subsequent operation. No doubt there would be a video ready to post if my cousin had been able to get her hand on a camera.


WTF! Even stranded out here in the ocean, they expect to come back for a family dinner!
So even my grandmother's simple cataract extraction turned into an complex conundrum involving hundreds of e-mails between the relatives, dozens of urgent referrals to opthalmologists around the world and possibly the booking of several intensive care beds. Everyone just needs to have a say. Wouldn't be surprised if they had lined up a cadaveric corneal transplant along the way.

Seriously. You'd think it was a heart transplant.


Doctor : Are they always like that?
Paul : Please excuse my relatives! They are all crazy!
With all the mindless chatter, there's barely a peep from the patient herself. Hard to get a word in edgewise with the concerned relatives busy answering for her. Poor grandma even went for the doctor's appointment flanked on both sides by an entire battalion of devoted kinsmen.

Doctor : So what's the problem today?
Grandma : Oh yes I have a little pain in my...
Uncle : I would call it more of a discomfort. In her left eye.
Aunt : Oh yes in her eye. And then she had a backache two years back. And then didn't you have a fall before that?
Grandma : Umm. Yeah and...
Aunt : Not to mention that you have high blood pressure? Is that alright?
Uncle : You look uncomfortable, grandma. Let me get you a pillow.
Grandma : No, I don't think...
Aunt : Maybe a cup of water would be better.

Despite their insistence that a doctor should be in attendance, I refused point-blank to accompany them on this farcical expedition. Don't get me wrong. I love my grandma but I think too much solicitude can harm quite as much as too little. No doubt she was being driven quite insane with all that TLC.

Which was really much ado about nothing. Especially when the procedure itself actually took all of twenty minutes.