Family, Gatherings, Health, Medicine, Uncategorized

An Apple a Day?

58 Comments

My dad was a big baby about getting sick.  Luckily he didn’t get sick often – mostly when my mom would just be recovering from something.  Right about the time she was feeling a bit better, he would come down with whatever bug had afflicted her.  My sister and I had always joked about it but then it got really funny the summer before my junior year when he caught my mom’s “persistent stomach flu” and it turned out she was actually pregnant. 

That old trope about women marrying men like their fathers hit a little too close to home with my second was-band.  He was pathetic and unbelievably whiny when he was ill – to the point that I was usually out of patience within the first 24 hours.  Me!

With these shining examples, I’ve pretty much always kept my sicknesses to myself.  Since my doctors figured out my adult-onset allergies, I’ve actually been quite healthy for the last 20 years, including managing to get through pandemic so far without contracting any of the variants.  Then last week I came down with a cold (yep, just a cold; I’ve tested twice).  It’s the first time I’ve had a cold in at least 10 years. 

Being retired, I didn’t need to call in sick so except for an occasional “stuck with a summer cold” text, I was pretty much just laying low.  As the weekend approached, I realized I might have a couple of conflicts that didn’t jive well with having a bad cold.  First was my other book club that was scheduled at my house on Saturday morning.  One of the members is a little fragile; didn’t want to her to catch the cold and honestly I wasn’t up to cooking and getting the place picked up.  On Friday morning I contacted everybody and re-scheduled.  Was still hoping to attend Steve’s celebration in person – tripled masked and standing in the back of the room.  Saturday morning I was still too symptomatic so switched to the virtual celebration.

It made me feel a little silly, bowing out of commitments I had made, just because of a cold, and I worried a bit that I was blowing my cold out of proportion, acting like my dad or my was-band.  But if pandemic has done anything good, it’s made me realize that I really shouldn’t drag my contagious germs around and expose innocent folks, even if it’s “just a cold”.  And I did put on a dressy shirt and earrings for the virtual!

Guess I have a couple more days of laying low and looking up silly sick memes.

How do you take care of yourself when you’re sick?

58 thoughts on “An Apple a Day?”

  2. I “go to earth”, staying in bed and refusing to be messed with. I’m almost embarrassingly healthy, apart from an annual cold (which, since we started masking in 2020, has not visited me.) I likely undermedicate, only taking such stuff as will comfort symptoms and put me to sleep. Just.don’l.mess.with.me!! Not even to help.

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  3. I self-medicate depending on what illness I have. Sleep is always good. Lots of fluids, which I do every day anyway, so no real change there. Mostly I just wait out a cold or whatever minor thing I have. I’ve been fortunate not to have had any more serious illnesses in my life. Used to get a cold once a year or so, but now I get them even less frequently.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  4. It’s hard to say. Last time I was really sick, with some sort of virus and a temperature of 105 degrees, was 1980. Then I just stayed in bed for a couple of days. After my shingles vaccinations, I was sluggish for a day and stayed in my chair, reading.
    On the other hand, I have minor cold symptoms, like a runny nose, much of the time. I assume it’s allergies of some variety. It doesn’t affect my daily routines.

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  5. Maybe we had the same cold, VS! I had one too. I picked it up at work. Everybody there had one and we all tested negative for covid, so did I. Some people went to the doctor and were tested there. They were all negative. I tested negative twice. I had a scratchy, sore throat which turned into sinus congestion and cough. I have asthma and it takes me longer to recover than most people. I picked up the cold in mid-August and still have minor sinus congestion and an occasional cough. But I’m much better. I never lost my senses of taste and smell.

    I don’t go to the doctor for minor things either. I depend heavily on Robitussin DM. It really helps. I also use Halls cough drops, the medicin-y tasting ones with mentholyptus. And I increase my corticosteroid inhaler dosage to deal with bronchial inflammation just for a short time.

    This has been the first time I have had any kind of cold or virus since December 2019 when I had influenza type B. I’m very good at staying home. I have plenty to read and lots of things that need my attention. This time of year is so busy for me though. Every year it’s the busiest time and I love September weather. I don’t want to be sick at this time of year.

    Rock Bend was really great again this year! I am no longer on the committee and I enjoy just wandering around and talking to people I haven’t seen for a long time. Were any of you there? I’m sorry I missed you if you were there. David Bromberg was fantastic. I also like Jeffrey Foucault and I really wanted to see him but there was a huge dumpster in my driveway due to the roofing project here and I couldn’t get out until 1:30 p.m. I should have known to park on the street. I’m also sorry to have missed the memorial for Steve. He will always be remembered with love.

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  6. I take to my bed and stay there. Husband tries to care for me, but I prefer to be left alone. I don’t get sick very often. I have worked as a therapist with so many children over the years that I have developed resistance to most cold viruses.

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  7. I hope you feel better soon. Now that the weather is so good, it must be frustrating when you don’t feel well. With masking, I have not had a cold in several years. For me, over the counter symptom control seems the way to go. I have ragweed allergies so i often feel I should close the balcony doors to keep out the pollen or hesitate to take walks in such ideal weather. I use Claritin and Flonase but this year, I also have been leaving my mask on outside to help filter out pollen. I was sorry to miss Steve’s memorial but did not get the link. I always looked forward to his wisdom and knowledgeable posts.

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      2. I thought I had signed in correctly with word press but apparently not! Sometimes with a first post it also tells me I am duplicating a post which I have not. Thanks for discovering me in the chaos of Wird Press.

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        4. Krista, on the day we were making up words, we discussed Word Press F***ups, and I came up with the word WoPFu, as in the military Snafu, but applied to WP. It makes me laugh.

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  9. Sleep. And the last few times I’ve had a bad cold, I take a cold capsule at night to help me sleep. Garlic-honey-lemon (amd maybe ginger) tea, IF I have the energy to make it.
    Or Bieler’s broth – anyone else remember that one?
    https://ifnh.org/bielers-broth-recipe/

    I’m learning to keep some frozen prepared meals on hand for “emergencies”, so I could really lay low if I need to. I had a 24-hour stomach bug a few weeks ago, and Husband helped out a bit (tho’ not as much as he would have, pre-stroke).

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    1. My niece tested negative twice and didn’t keep testing, but decided it was likely COVID based on A) the fact that the friend she had just had over to her apartment got sick at the same time and tested positive, and B) her complete loss of sense of smell and taste. She isolated assuming it was COVID.

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    3. In addition to the fact that I’ve tested negative more than once, this illness has completely followed the pattern and trajectory of every cold I’ve ever had in the last 20 years. I don’t know anyone else who has come down with Covid and I still have my sense of smell and my sense of taste. So I’m pretty sure it’s a cold but I have also been sheltering in place throughout all of this with the exception of a couple of trips to Walgreens, completely masked.

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  12. I rarely get colds, and I’m lucky to not have allergies. When I do get a cold, though, it usually develops into an upper respiratory infection which makes me thoroughly miserable, and then I just want to be left alone. I drink lots of tea with honey and a squeeze of lemon juice, and if the misery persists, I’ll take Alka-Seltzer Plus, that usually does the trick. I also make a point of getting my annual flu shot and up my intake of vitamin C in the form of eating oranges and drinking OJ. Don’t know if it does any good, but pretty sure it doesn’t hurt anything.

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    1. My brother and I twice volunteered for ten day stints at the now defunct Common Cold Research Centre in Salisbury, in the seventies. Each volunteer would receive a dose of saline solution by nasal irrigation (apparently an irresponsible thing to do, I learned later, and for sure it was the cause my subsequent long term nasal polyps problem). Some of us would receive a mild dose of cold or flu virus, and some wouldn’t. Then they’d observe the results, in an attempt to develope a vaccine for this particular strain of virus.
      We’d learn interesting things about the treatment of colds and flu, and one of these things was there claim that the amount of vitamin C you’d need to ingest per week, to prevent a cold, would be absolutely massive. I don’t remember how much it was, but you’d need an actual block of the stuff that you could hold in your hand. So any time I may eat or drink something containing vitamin C, I tend to just think of its general benefits, and if I get a cold, I get one.

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      1. Nasal irrigation with a saline solution, using a Neti pot, is a common practice. Why do you think it’s an “irresponsible” thing to do, Fenton? Back in my teens, when I was diving, I’d regularly do it to remove the chlorine water that was forced into my sinuses and would cause awful headaches if I didn’t. I do it now when I can feel my sinuses becoming clogged from a cold, it gives almost instant relief.

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        2. Aaaagh, I’m trying not to think about that.
          I have an old friend I haven’t seen in years, who would now be retired from her various jobs as a highly competent nurse. It was she who told me this, and she immediately made the connection with my polypses, which did begin not so long after our trips to the cold centre. The words she used were “You never use nasal irrigation.” I did kind of think, “So why was it invented?” Nevertheless, despite her shockingly racist views, I had the greatest respect for her experience and knowledge, and never, until now, doubted her word.

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        3. I’ve sent an answer to PJ which hasn’t yet appeared, so hope in due time it, and this postscript, will appear in the correct order: I remarked on the racism of my old friend Lynn, seemingly irrelevantly. I just wanted to get in a dig about it, it always hurt and angered me. That’s all.

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  13. I haven’t had a cold since pre-pandemic, a nice side effect of my careful adherence to COVID protocols. When I worked in an office full time, I usually caught something once a year.

    I take a zinc lozenge if I feel something coming on. Peppermint tea is good for a sore throat and that stuffy congested feeling.

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  14. OT: Sherrilee, I looked up the two blogs you suggested, on Maria Kondo. Interesting to read all your different views on clutter. But “clutter” is not a real word, did you know that? There’s actually no such thing. What we do have, is a serious shortage of large buildings.

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  18. WP is really acting up. Fenton has made two comments that I have been notified of via my email by WP, but so far, neither of those comments appear on the blog. Did they go into the spam folder, I wonder?

    I didn’t think to copy the first comment in which he explained where he got the idea that nasal irrigation with a saline solution was not a good idea. The following is his second comment:

    “I’ve sent an answer to PJ which hasn’t yet appeared, so hope in due time it, and this postscript, will appear in the correct order: I remarked on the racism of my old friend Lynn, seemingly irrelevantly. I just wanted to get in a dig about it, it always hurt and angered me. That’s all.”

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    1. I think I may have found a remedy for comments going to spam. I think it has worked for Margaret. I will run it past Sherilee. I retrieved Fenton’s comments.

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      1. Thanks, Renee, but I’m wondering if you can detect a discernible pattern of why some comment go into spam in the first place? As near as I could tell there was nothing offensive in Fenton’s comments.

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        1. Absolutely nothing. There is no rhyme or reason. The solution, Ibthink, is changing ingredients your status to author from commenting. Authors have increased posting latitude.

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  20. In addition to Renee, checking, I’ve checked a comments a couple of times today, and none of our group has gone into spam. And WordPress doesn’t seem to have any good answer for why some things seem to take so much longer to post than others.

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    2. Well, apparently Fenton’s comments this evening landed in spam and needed to be retrieved by Renee. This is a relatively new problem, or at least it has become much more frequent recently, and I find it peculiar that WP seems to be dismissive of it, and are not helpful in finding the cause and fixing it. Neither Renee nor vs should have to be constantly checking the spam folder to see what might have unceremoniously been dispatched to there.

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  22. I’m a great one for guilt. Now I’m feeling guilty over this.
    Anyway, if this gets through : so that was my explanation about my opinion on nasal irrigation.
    So now I’m an author? Or not an author?
    An unauthorised author?

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  23. I push on through I figure out what symptoms I’ve got maybe look it up in the homeopathic remedy book and figure out how to temper the stuff quite honestly I don’t get very sick very often when I do I become a lump on the couch for however long it takes unless I’ve got a whole bunch of stuff planned then I become really ill with a whole bunch of stuff planned and go about my business trying to avoid others along the way I’ve been very lucky a couple of serious bullshit I’ve had turned out just to be a discovery that I had serious stuff handed over to the gurus and zip zap good as new clean living pays off on occasion

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