Flu Remedy

Last week Masha had her first bona fide cold. It started on Wednesday with a few sniffles, but the sniffles quickly morphed into a constant fountain of drainage and sneezing. Otherwise, she was content and playful with just as much energy as usual. Then by Thursday, I wasn't feeling so hot. I figured I just had the same thing and started taking some zinc (that stuff WORKS!) But by midday Friday, I knew it was something else. Besides the stuffy nose and sneezing, I was running a fever, I had chills, and my whole body felt like I'd been hit by a truck. I couldn't even sit down without feeling like my entire body was bruised.

Looking back, it was probably the flu and I could have gone in to at least get tested for it. But who feels like going to the doctor when you have the flu? I mean, seriously! :) Luckily Masha received the first of her two flu shots for the season two weeks ago and coincidentally or not, she never got any worse. But I was pretty much incapacitated. Poor Ilya had to stay home from work and take care of us. I started all the tried and true cold remedies that usually alleviate at least some of the misery - drinking lots of herbal teas with honey and lemon, making a tent with a towel over a steaming pot of peppermint, chamomile, rosemary, and eucalyptus tea and breathing it in, and eating oscillococcinum and zinc like candy (well, okay, as directed every 4 hours). Nothing was really helping, though, and with everything I did I just felt worse and worse.

Finally I sent Ilya to the store for a few necessary items while I gathered some more from the garden, and when he returned, I whipped up the following in our handy $7.50 thrift-store juicer:

6 carrots
3 kale leaves
1 handful of parsley
1 lemon
1 inch of gingerroot
1 clove of garlic

...and we promptly drank it - I against the massive viral onslaught and Ilya for prevention. Masha even had a few watered down sips of carrot/kale/parsley juice without the spicier items and seemed to enjoy it. No more than five minutes later, Ilya looked at me and said..."Whoa...you look a lot better." And it was true. I was no longer congested and was breathing freely, my head felt clear, and suddenly I had energy, which I wasn't sure what to do with since I knew I was still sick and should be in bed resting. Now that's something they didn't teach us in medical school.

By the next morning, my fever had broken and my only remaining symptoms were a few sniffles. We went ahead and made another juice and drank it just to be sure. Granted, we'll never know if I would have just gotten better that quickly anyway, but I prefer to think that it had at least a small hand in my rapid recovery. Of course, the super concentrated shot of raw garlic that it provided has kind of curbed our social life for a few days, but we weren't planning on attending any big parties anyway since I was supposed to be sick in bed!