Cure for the Common Cold

       It’s cold and flu season and everybody has their own reaction to being sick. Some people try to power through it by ignoring their symptoms. They are a virus’s best friend, spreading the bug through offices and schools, wherever they go while they’re in denial.

        Some people in my family view sickness as a personal affront. How could their bodies betray them with a virus? Being sick is a sign of weakness.

        Women often say that men are the biggest babies when they get sick. They demand constant care and attention. I think that’s probably because the mom of the family is expected to take care of everyone no matter what, but if the dad can get off of work, he expects to be cared for.

         Some people are whiners, complaining through stuffed up noses about their misery, beyond childhood days.

         Then there are the wimps, like me. I don’t fight it at all.  I don’t whine, I just go right down for the count. That’s exactly what I did two weeks ago.  For a day, my throat hurt and I had the sniffles. I thought maybe it was just allergies. But the next day it was obvious that I had a cold.

         Part one of my “Oh man, I’m sick” strategy is to stop the sickness from spreading. I kicked John out of our bedroom and isolated myself under mountains of covers. In the middle of the night I got up and went through the house with Clorox wipes.  I wiped down the refrigerator door, the microwave, the TV remotes, telephone, the light switches, door knobs, banister, and anything else I thought I’d touched. I walked through rooms, spraying Lysol in the air and then retreated to my bed.

For the next couple of days John and Johnny would come in to check on me when they got home from work and I’d shoo them away.  Sarah kept tabs on me via phone from WSU after she called the first morning and thought she had a wrong number because my voice was unrecognizable.

Part two of my sickness plan is to get better as fast as I can, that’s why I surrender immediately. On my house sanitizing mission, I’d mixed up a glass of Airborne and drank that down. (A friend swears by Zicam, another recommends Cold-Eze.) I spent the next two days in bed surrounded by tissue boxes, watching remodeling and real estate shows on HGTV, reading old magazines, and eating Campbell’s Soup on the Go from our pantry. 

For dinner, John got take-out Pho for us and when the cook heard that I had a cold, he threw in some extra hot sauce for me. Everybody has their personal cold remedies.

My trusty laptop was with me in the sick bed, so I looked up information like how to tell the difference between the flu and a cold. I didn’t have a fever or muscle aches, and it came on gradually, so this was probably a cold. I’d had a pneumonia shot a few years ago, so I didn’t have to worry about it turning into something more serious.

I logged into Pinterest and looked up cold remedies. Several people mentioned a tea recipe. It sounded good, I was drinking tea anyway, and I knew I had the ingredients. It didn’t instantly cure me, but maybe it shortened the duration of the cold, and it tasted good. Here’s the recipe, from prettylittlepantry.blogspot.com:

Ingredients:

1 Cup of Tazo Orange Blossom Tea

1 Tsp Honey

1/2 Tsp Cinnamon

1/2 Tsp Ginger

Dash of Cayenne Pepper (Optional)

Brew the Tazo tea as you normally would. 

Once the tea has brewed for about a minute or two add the Tsp of Honey, the 1/4 tsp Cinnamon, the 1/4 tsp Ginger, and the dash of Cayenne if you are really congested. Stir and enjoy. 

I used Tazo Wild Sweet Orange tea, which I mistakenly thought was the same as the Orange Blossom tea, and it still tasted delicious, but maybe I would have gotten better faster if I’d used the right tea. Either way, lots of fluids are good when you’re sick.

I only went out once while I was still miserable—to get more tissue when I exhausted my stockpile from Costco. I dashed into the store in the middle of the day, when most people are at work, and I splurged on the expensive name brand, with lotion tissue. After going through six boxes of what now felt like sandpaper tissue, I figured I’d earned the good stuff. I also grabbed a tube of Nivea Milk and Honey lip balm (Sarah’s recommendation), then made my way back to my cocoon.

After two days in bed, contemplating life’s big questions like: why don’t dogs and cats get colds? I began to feel more human. The head cold ran its course. My throat stopped hurting. Then I switched from blowing my nose constantly to coughing. Eventually that also calmed down. 

It took a full two weeks, but I’m healthy again just in time to report to my part time job and of course, Zumba. I’ve cleared away the tissue box, teapot, and lip balm from my nightstand. Amazingly, nobody else in my house got the cold, so my germaphobic techniques were a success.

Laura Keolanui Stark is up and running again. She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.