Pakistani Mothers as Honorary MDs (Part 1 of 2)

Pakistani Mothers as Honorary MDs (Part 1 of 2)
- by Amena Hassan

I love my mother. She has always told me that in our faith, heaven is beneath your mother's feet. However, one thing I can do without is her medical advice. For some reason, Pakistani mothers think they are Honorary MD's.

It all started when I was a three year old and put a fake diamond in my ear. At that time, I was in an extremely curious phase of life and was doing horrifying acts such as rubbing hand cream into my scalp and crumbling chicken stock cubes onto my older sister's best salwar kameez sets. However, being the youngest, I got away with many punishable acts, until I dislodged a diamond from a cheap necklace and stuck it into my ear canal.

When my mother found out she said to me in Urdu, "Don't cry beta, I'll try and get it out." So I sat in her lap, sniffing and wondering how she would perform this miracle, until she said…"Let me get it out with a pin." I jumped off her lap. "Pin??" I yelled. "Pin in my ear??" Little did I know is that she actually meant a hairpin, but in my yet undeveloped mind I thought she had meant a sharp fabric pin and went running down the hall like a crazy muppet with my hand to my ear. This was my first experience of being in surgery.

As I grew older, I began to understand my mother's reasoning behind her pseudo medical advice. There was the usual—drink milk, eat carrots, swallow cod liver oil capsules everyday, and get your Vitamin D from the sun (I used to live in England then—we got more fog and rain than sun). Then there was the strange stuff she said, as if she had learnt these cures from a secret herbalist I didn't trust, like eat beetroot, rub coconut oil on your head, and eat cow's feet for dinner. To a Pakistani mother, these remedies are nothing out of the ordinary, and she would say, "Yeah so, do you have a problem with that?" However, I found the reasoning behind the eating of these foods equally puzzling.

My mother claimed that eating beetroot increases one's blood flow. This may be true, and quite a convenient reason for my Mom to pick, especially since beetroot juice is RED. Why, if beetroots did all of that, why would we need the American Red Cross for god's sakes? Her second reasoning behind coconut oil was that it increased circulation but also warmed the brain. I do have to admit that there is plenty of evidence, which proves massage does indeed increase circulation. But what is all this about warming the brain? The only thing that coconut oil does in the winter is freeze your hair braids so you can make little animal figures out of them, like you do by twisting those long balloons. And worst of all, cow's feet…ugh. Who ever came up with this horrendous recipe? The only medical reasoning that I was given behind this one was that "it makes you stronger?" I've noticed that when many of these Honorary MD's don't know the reasoning behind a certain food, they use this "making you stronger" excuse. I think it is just a method of punishing your children.

Next month I will share with you my medical adventures with my Mother, Honorary MD, as a fully-grown adult. I've heard many mothers are now planning on getting their PhD's also, especially when their children get older and have their own children, so I am proud of each and every one of them. However, please do not include me on your patient list.