Columnist John Katsilometes: Grandma’s forecast still warm

Monday, June 19, 2000 | 9:01 a.m.

John Katsilometes is the Sun assistant features editor. His column appears Mondays. Reach him at kats@lasvegassun.com or 259-2327.

It's either a manifestation of growing older, or living in Idaho, or both, but my grandmother is chronically curious about the weather. They get a lot of weather in Pocatello, Idaho -- 85 degrees one moment, hail the next, then back to 85.

Thus, she is interested in weather all over the country. The traditional launching point of any conversation between us is a question about the weather:

"It rained all day here yesterday. How's it there?"

"About 90 or so, maybe 95."

"The Weather Channel says it's in the upper-90s."

"Then it must be in the upper-90s. It's pretty calm, though. No wind today."

"The Weather Channel says it's 30-mile-an-hour gusts."

"Well all I can tell you is here, on my porch, there is no wind."

Occasionally I'll tease her. Once she called, asking about the weather, and I said, "It's 107."

This was at 8 in the morning. In December.

"Aw, that's terrible," she said. "Well I guess it's better than this crummy snow."

There are the recurring arguments about which weather pattern is better or worse, Rocky Mountain snowstorms or Nevada desert heat.

"I can't stand the heat," she'll say. "I can stand anything but the heat."

"Even snow?" I'll say.

"Oh, yeah. Snow at least is pretty to look at. Heat is just hot."

"People driving to work in snowmobiles, that's pretty? The time I ran into a snowdrift 6 feet high pulling into a gas station? Yep, that was real Norman Rockwell material."

We go back and forth. I have trained her not to call any time it rains here and CNN and the Weather Channel air the traditional footage of water gushing through the Charleston Underpass near downtown.

"That happens every time it rains here for more than three minutes," I told her. "Besides, we don't live down there."

Last week I received an alarming call not from, but about, Grandma. It had nothing to do with the weather. Something happened. After feeling faint during her aqua-size class, she felt numbness in her arms and was taken to the hospital, where after a battery of tests she was told she needed an angioplasty.

This is the procedure where a tiny balloon is run through a patient's clogged heart artery, then is inflated (but not too much) to restore blood flow.

Scientifically, the operation is described as "expunging gunky matter." It sounds so simple when explained over the phone, as if Dr. Goodwrench was merely changing a spark plug.

But when you're a few months shy of 80, no procedure is routine, especially when terms like "99-percent clogged artery" and "three-hour ambulance ride to Salt Lake City" are being tossed around. So there were some uneasy moments while Grandma was taking her balloon ride.

Soon after, when she was lucid enough to take phone calls, I phoned in and asked, as calmly as possible, "Are you OK?"

"I'm a little tired, that's all," she said. "Is it hot down there?"

I was never happier to tell her that it was.