Did you miss us last week? Our apartment had been hit by the plague... ie: Lilly and I were both sick as dogs. Personally I put off going to the doctor for as long as possible so I tried every possible thing I could, traditional and not, to try and feel better without going to the doctor. It worked for a while, but ultimately I went to the doctors. You see I started to get a cold a few days after Christmas (that's right folks I've been fighting a cold for just about an entire month) and was starting to get better. Lilly inevitably caught my cold and went to the doctors and got diagnosed a sinus infection. After a few days of seemingly getting better I came down with a treacherous sore throat. But I did some research, since I was pretty sure I had strep, and it turns out you can ride strep out without anti-biotics and it's not a completely terrible idea. But then I was doing a nasal rinse (cause they feel amazing, like seriously, so good) and truth be told I was a little too blocked up on one side to be doing the rinse and some of the water backed into my ear. And it hurt. A lot. The next day even, and at that point my throat was still sore and I was running a fever, and that's when I caved and went to the doctors. Good thing too, turns out I had the beginning stage of pneumonia, FUN! (not) ...and that self induced ear infection.
A little peak into what isn't even all of the the investments that have been dutifully taken over the past month by one or the both of us as part of our cold fighting, or more accurately I-need-some-drugs-to-sleep-and-I-want-them-now, regimen. You might be asking yourself why is there a bottle of Listerine in this picture? Well gargling Listerine makes me feel like I'm killing off whatever germs I've breathed in all day and have lodged themselves in my mouth/throat area. Now whether or not this is true isn't all that important, since it makes me feel better either way.
The hands down winner for oddest, yet semi-helpful, home remedy I found on the internet was from a guy commenting on this page about fighting step without antibiotics where he says:
When the strep came back, I researched natural cures online and found a recommendation from experienced naturopath family practitioners to take a mixture of garlic, raw honey, and cayenne pepper with a spoon. After swallowing wait a while before eating or drinking so that it can coat the back of the throat. The garlic and raw honey kill the bacteria and the spicy pepper draws the blood to prevent healing. Another recommendation was to gargle with raw apple cider vinegar.
Now that wasn't a ton to go on as far as how much of this to that and whatnot, but I gave it a try. We had honey in the apartment, but not raw, and hindsight 20/20 I think grating the garlic would've been better than my simply chopping it as small as I had the patience for at the time. I expected it to taste horrible, but it actually didn't taste all that bad at all. Though I had some left over that I tried again a couple days later and the garlic had become quite potent in it. At the time of my sore throat we didn't have any apple cider vinegar, so I can't speak to that, although I've read in numerous places of it's benefits, so there's that.
All in all hopefully the plague is behind us and we get back to normal health and stay that way for the rest of the winter. Because I know if I don't lose the cough and blowing nose noises soon, Lilly might kill me. With any luck we'll bounce back this week, and then maybe we'll get back to blogging about nicer things. And to those of you out there battling winter sicknesses of your own, hang in there, it's gotta get better, right? :/
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