How to Cure a Head Cold

Well, I think I may be coming down with a head cold. The first fall cold virus seems to always start making its way around town about the same time as school gets started. I am not sure why it works that way, but it's true. In September, the summer colds depart for warmer climes, and the real-McCoy colds set in.

But I haven't had a really full-on cold for three years. Yes, three full years! And the reason I haven't been sick for that long is because I basically take care of myself in the opposite way from how I grew up.

When I was younger the true dysfunctionality of my family was never more apparent than when someone was sick. If you were moderately sick, you were told you were fine, to "stop over-dramatizing," and that it was OK to go to school or work. So of course you did that, and you got sicker. Now, once you got sicker, you were told that you were still fine and so you kept going, until you could not breathe, had a 103 degree fever, and had to go to the emergency room. At this point it was considered OK to declare yourself "a little under the weather."

Side note: My father actually walked around with lung cancer for a couple of years before getting seen at the doc, at which point he was terminal and it was too late to do anything for him. He kept telling himself it was "just a little cough." 

Anyway, as I matured (a questionable claim, I know) I decided I was going to do things differently. Isn't that just the best thing about growing up -- that we can decide to change the rules and make better choices for ourselves? So my rules for being sick are somewhat the opposite than what my family and/or society advocates.

As a note, I am not a doctor, but I am a 55 year-old woman who taught classrooms full of sick children (because their parents did not want or were not able to stay home from work with them) and once saw my family through a documented bout with H1N1 yet did NOT catch it myself. So that kind of makes me an expert, right? Here are my anti-virus rules:

1.  If you think you are getting sick, stay home the first day you feel it. Sometimes your body is fighting something and it just needs a little more rest in order to rally its defenses. You could get up tomorrow and actually be fine. So yes, stay home, even though you are not officially dying. We Americans hail from a lot of Puritan stock, and the Puritans did not indulge themselves in this way (which is probably why half of them died their first winter in Plymouth). Take naps, watch TV or read, and stay hydrated. No exercising, no cooking, no yardwork, no career-work. At this point you're probably contagious anyway, so why spread things around? (Unless you want to show up before business hours, head for that annoying coworker's desk and wipe your hands all over their their stapler, phone, mouse and keyboard. That is OK.)

2.  Place your toothbrushes in near-boiling water or put them in hydrogen peroxide every time you brush. Use a clean brush every time you brush your teeth while you think you are sick. I keep about three toothbrushes handy so I only have to sterilize them once a day. I saw a study once that said this alone can cut a cold's time in half -- from nine days to about three, and I can personally testify to the truth that. Why put all that virus load back into your mouth via a dirty toothbrush two or more times a day? It just makes no sense if you think about it.

3. I know there are many studies that say echinacea is not effective, but my vote is that it is -- as long as you have it handy so you can start dosing yourself at the first sign of illness. Once a cold has taken hold, it's pretty useless. But right at the start....yes. It works.

4. Know that even though you may knock out 90 percent of the virus within a day or so, it will lurk in your system for up to a month, ready to jump back into activation if you go through a prolonged period of stress, alcohol consumption or lack of sleep. So everything in moderation for awhile. It's worth it.

5. This next bullet is about prevention. I am the Howard Hughes of the winery -- germaphobic to a tee. When someone is ill and I find out about it, I spray door handles, telephones, and even the ill person themselves with Lysol. Year-round, I use hand sanitizer on such a regular basis I should buy stock in whatever company makes Purell.  Most of us encounter sick people every day we're out in public and never know it. (The same people who send their kids to school sick also go to work sick, which is another reason why western civilization is doomed.) I use hand sanitizer after leaving each store I visit, especially if I've touched doors or money, and always after handling things like restaurant menus...you touch the menu, then pick up some fries with your fingers and voila! Instant contamination. I also sanitize after shaking hands with people. Just be discreet or you will offend when they see you squirt Purell all over yourself after touching their grubby mitts.

Oh, and I never touch my eyes, nose or mouth with my hands either. I'll scratch my face with the arms of my sunglasses or my sleeve before I'll use my hands. 

Anyway, today is a "do illness differently than your parents did," kind of day so I'm back to the sofa now and will post more later, once this virus abates. Stay safe out there and watch out for cold viruses as well as all the non hand washers of the world. They're both out there, I'm telling ya.

At least I do have some nice spots to indulge my malaise in.

To kill a virus

So yesterday had me laid out flat with something like a cold. At least I think it was a cold. I had crushing fatigue and a snuffly nose and felt like I was living in a sub-Arctic climate, even though it was 80 degrees outside and just lovely.

 If you're living a life of average health and average activity, colds are pretty easy to figure out. Their intrusion into your life usually goes something like this: Three days coming on. Three days with you. And three days of heading for the exit door. That's what I've always told my family, and it's pretty much held to be true.

Unless, of course, you catch it early enough.

Early intervention is, I am convinced, the easiest way to shave a week or more off that old adage. I have found that if I really take good care of myself at the first sign of symptoms, I can lose or reduce symptoms drastically, about 90 percent of the time.

But we Americans are a "get up and go" bunch, so getting people to "sit down and stay" is damn near impossible a lot of the time. But when you consider the lost wages, money spent on sick pay, plus the inevitable trips to the doctors for antibiotics once the creeping crud settles into your lungs or sinuses and causes infection, staying home for one day at the start of an illness is a pretty fiscally sound idea.

So yesterday I woke up feeling puny, and decided everything would have to go on hold for 24 hours.  I spent the morning on the sofa watching TV, ate some chicken soup for lunch, and took a two-hour nap in the afternoon. That's usually my best indicator, for me, that I'm really sick -- napping. In general I have an extremely hard time sitting on the sofa for a couple of hours, much less falling asleep in the daytime. But yesterday it felt so good to do just that. In between naps and rests I sterilized my toothbrush by putting it in near-boiling water for 10 minutes, used echinacea drops every couple of hours, and stayed under the blankets to keep warm.

Or not.

Today I am about 85 percent better and certainly feeling well enough to rejoin the human race. My guess is that I'm not contagious anymore either, but will still hedge that bet by keeping my hands clean and not getting close to anyone (I'll just blow kisses to Big Ag as we pass each other in the kitchen).

People always say that prevention is the best cure, but true prevention not always possible if you have children at home, deal with the general public at your job, or just have regular contact with people. But the one thing that is possible is catching symptoms early on and allowing your body to do what it does best, which is heal. 

That crushing fatigue is your body's way of slowing you down so it can better mount a defense against an unfamiliar virus. Your fever is another defense, as few viruses can survive in a body warmer than 98.6. Our bodies have a huge store of biological wisdom stored inside our cells, from millions of years of evolution. Even your doctor can't claim that kind of healing knowledge.

So the next time you feel like you're coming down with something, listen to your body's wisdom and do what it's telling you. Sit down and stay. It's hard for us to do, but ultimately will put us back in the game much faster than if we try and hobble (and sneeze and cough) our way along, infecting others as we go and prolonging our own misery.

From the Land of the Living, I salute all you fighting the Creeping Crud or Mystery Sniffles today.

Sleep -- Nature's First Homeopathic Remedy

So on New Year's Eve, I started feeling puny about 10 pm or so., while driving home from a party we'd gone to at a coworker's house.  Thinking it was something I ate, I went to bed and suffered from an upset stomach all night, which left me tossing and turning until morning, at which point I felt even worse than before.

So needless to say, New Year's Day was not fun for me.  And realizing that, I took to my bed -- first from 11 am until about 1 pm that day, and then again at 7 :30 pm until 8:30 am the following day.  For those of you keeping track, that means I slept approximately 15 hours within a 24 hour period.  And, not surprisingly, I awoke yesterday feeling like the walking wounded -- still not 100 percent, but leagues better than I had been the day before.  I was even able to go into work, and found my energy had returned to about 100 percent of normal by noon.

In our modern society, where we are always going, going, going, we lament illnesses not so much as alarming physical symptoms that mean the wonderful machine known as our body is fighting off some kind of microscopic invader, but rather as inconveniences, impediments from going to work, from accomplishing, and from doing ever more.

And because of that, we miss out on nature's most powerful restorative, that of sleep.  Sleep, where the body quiets and our immune system can fight, unhindered by stress.  Sleep, where damaged cells are rejuvenated, and where the body lies still enough to heal.

We don't like sleep much in our society, in fact, get a group of hard workers together and it often turns into a brag-fest about how little sleep each one thinks they need each night.  But, ultimately, I think lack of sleep results in nothing but illness, both short and long-term.  And especially when we're ill, I think the worst thing we can do is take some kind of pill to enable ourselves to keep going when our body is telling us, in clear and simple language, that we just need to STOP.

So my advice to my homesteading friends who are going to suffer from colds or flu this year is this:  Get your farm chores done (or better yet, have someone do them for you), go inside the house, tuck yourself into bed and sleep.  Just sleep.  Let your body manage your healing the way it best knows how to do.

Because somewhere deep down inside you, as you snuggle under the covers and fall into the exhausted sleep we only get when we're truly ill, your body will fight the good fight and you will awake,  weak but healing, slightly drained but on the path to restoration.  

Sleep is the best medicine, and is truly the first homeopathic remedy, used for as long as mankind has been mankind.

Filling in for Big Ag

Big Ag has been sick with the flu all week long, so today I will be going out to dig holes and plant our ollalieberry and blueberry bushes and Seckel pear tree I bought last week.  Normally, we have something of a division of labor around the homestead, where Big Ag does much of the heavy lifting and I do all the other lighter tasks. 

Digging holes in this caliche soil of ours requires a fair amount of upper body strength, which I do not have, at least not in abundance.  I can walk up and down hills for days collecting produce from our property, spend long hours juicing pomegranates and making preserves, hang wash and such, but I'm not good at the heavier types of manual farm labor.

But when one half of the team goes down, the other has to fill in, and this is nowhere more true than on a farm. You just can't pile everything on the absent co-worker's desk until he/she returns. These bare-root berry bushes and trees we got won't wait until Big Ag is well, any more than the chickens can wait to be fed, watered and cleaned out when I'm down with a cold or flu.  More than quarterly sales reports or weekly staff meetings, there would be dire consequences to blowing off or postponing what needs to be done here. So we each have to be able to do the other's tasks, in a pinch.  

We do have Groceries, our middle son, living with us, so it's possible for him to help, too.  But since Groceries attends college and works when he's not in class, the weekends are about all I can count on him for.  I guess if Big Ag and I ever went down with the same bug at the same time, Groceries would be doing our chores in the darkness of evening, after he returns home. One thing's for sure: With a farm you have to always be sure there's someone around to cover the chores, or lives (animal and plant) will be lost. 

The good news is that it's supposed to be 70 degrees and sunny today, so I at least will have pleasant weather to go out and be a manly farmer in.  Now excuse me while I belch and fart and get my masculine side going here.