Alice the Goon (20 Jan, 2011)

Bill is arriving this evening so he can take mom into town tomorrow morning for her second blood test to see if the new diuretic is working. She says that she sure can't tell any difference, either in her swollen belly or in her calves.

She told me a funny story. When she was a teenager, her older brother was a star of the high school football team. He had very hairy calves, and before they could tape up his ankles, they had to shave his legs so the tape wouldn't pull off the hair when he removed it. His teammates started calling him "Alice the Goon" after a character in the old Popeye cartoon...a big gangly woman who had exceptionally large and hairy calves.
Mom said that looking down at her own calves reminds her of Alice the Goon, because there is so much edema in her lower legs. She said that they are so swollen that they don't even look like her own legs, so she thinks she should change her name to Florence the Goon.