Sick notes

WE have been besieged again with illness. But this time it’s not just us.

Evil flu and cold bugs have been spreading around the island.

Amazingly, only the women in our house have been affected. La Gidg (my daughter) and I were struck on Saturday afternoon.

I think I prematurely sent her back to school on Tuesday as when I picked her up from school she still looked game, but no, within three minutes she was conked out on the back seat. Bad mummy.

It’s pretty normal isn’t it to have to work through illness, especially if you work online, or make yourself available to people to contact you online.

Many of my messages in the past three days have read ‘Hi Vicki, sorry that you aren’t very well, could you just do this thing for me….’.

It’s only the click of a mouse after all, right?

So I guess I only have myself to blame.

So instead of getting annoyed with myself for not taking some time off to get better faster I asked my Facebook friends for their cures for the common cold.

Some of them are pretty sensible, some of them sound pretty unpleasant, but each of them apparently works…. it’s up to you if you try them!

There were plenty of votes for whisky, honey and lemon.

Victoria Davis said ‘it won’t cure you but you’ll sleep!’ Natalie Jackson’s dad always went for alcohol and vitamin C although she goes for the more sensible Lemsip. Quite a few went for garlic. Belinda Shaw’s granddad used to put cloves of garlic into a bottle of whisky.

Garlic, which contains a ¬chemical called allicin, can zap the cold viruses that lead to infection. There were also a lot of votes for cayenne pepper and other spices.

Lord Martyn Rose chomps on hot chilli peppers and gets himself around a good curry, he swears by them. Another friend, Alison Garbutt, stands by honey with ground cinnamon.

She said she’s been using it every day for over a year and hasn’t had any colds or flu.

Certain spices have been found to be beneficial bug fighters, including cayenne pepper, which contains an active ingredient called capsaicin that beats congestion by thinning the mucus in your nasal passages so you can breathe more easily.

Lisa Bonner came up with an unusual one, which I think is a variation on the German ‘wear wet socks’ idea for coughs. She told me to put Vick’s Vapour Rub on my feet and put socks on as it stopped coughs immediately!

You might also want to get stuck into some chicken soup which Selena Garfield said was ‘like Jewish penicillin’. My more sensible friend, and the only one actually qualified to comment as she is a nurse, Sally Luxmore, said ‘night and day nurse!

The old saying is treat a cold and it will last two weeks, let it run its course and it will take a fortnight’. Sage advice there, basically she’s saying there’s nothing you can do.

Just drink lots of fluids, get indoors, keep warm, and find someone to supply you with plenty of cups of tea. If you’re up to it now might be a good time to go and check on any neighbours you have that are elderly, just pop in and say hello.

If they’re feeling under the weather they might need a bit of support, so don’t forget to do your good deed!

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