Why does the older generation think they know more than their doctors do?

How come they have a hard time realizing that, although they have spent way more time with and in their bodies than any one doctor has, they still don't know EVERYTHING about it nor have ALL the tools to keep it functioning for as long as possible?

Now, before you start in on me about how our mothers and grandmothers have earned the right to be stuck in their ways, let me just say, having been raised by my great-grandmother, I know that already. Doesn't mean I will ever fully understand it. And don't front, you wont either!

My grandmother has this thing about keeping secrets. "I thought I told you", she says. "YES I DID TELL YOU", she insists. "I thought I did", she realizes. And when I ask her how she's feeling, "Oh, I'm here. I wont complain", she responds. Grrr. Extremely frustrating because that tells me absolutely nothing of importance. Its the "not complaining" that lands our mothers and grandmother and fathers and grandfathers fighting for their lives from illnesses too far gone.

It was only last week that my grandmother confessed that her doctors had "found something" on her EKG. And it was only last week that she told me that she had not only spent days in bed because of a cold, but also because she had been having chest pains. And before this, she had taken her own sweet time telling me that she was now a diabetic, because, in her opinion she really wasn't. The doctors had gotten it wrong. She "wasn't gonna be takin' no more medicine", just like she doesn't take her daily blood pressure medicine because she doesn't want to. I swear, old people can be worse than kids sometimes! Yeah, I said it, because its the truth! They DO NOT wanna listen, or do what they are told, because they know everything.

Well, I threatened to administer her meds if she doesn't get some get right! And I reminded her that people drop from heart attacks all the time. And that when they do drop, you only have a window of time to save lives. She's already survived fibroid tumors that overtook her reproductive organs. She's already survived a brain tumor. So if she thinks she's gonna fuck around and have a heart attack and die on me, she has another thing coming. I will channel my great-grandmother and put foot in her behind first!