The past two weeks, I've had what could only be described as a dry, tickly, highly annoying cough. The one where you hear it too often on the bus and you end up giving someone the fish-eye. And I'm not even a smoker anymore, so who the hell knows where I got it from.
And then last Friday, it abruptly morphed into something that made me thisclose to calling a local priest and having him shout at me "the power of Christ compels you!"
I was sneezing, chilly, hot, sweaty, coughing up gross things, losing my voice, you name it. It wasn't the flu, though, I know myself pretty well. So I shuffled off to the doctor on Monday morning and had him check me out, silently praying to God that he would reach for loads of antibiotics so that I could remain in a stupor drooling in front of my Lara Croft playstation game for 3 days. Not so.
You see, doctors here are much different. In the US, you grow up with knowledge that if you're sick, you see a doctor for drugs. There are many different variations on this theme, but in general, this is what it boils down to. Doctors are always likely to throw some pretty, flourescent-coloured drugs at you and even give you free samples of stuff you don't need, just in case. This is probably because doctors are incentivized by pharmaceutical companies to do so. More drugs = more money= everyone in the medical profession is happy, and can buy themselves another limited edition Ferrari.
Luckily, I was brought up to not always believe doctors 100%, and to always know my body, how it works, to read about medicines and their effects, and to always question things (Mamo was a supervisor at Sloan-Kettering in New York, and she witnessed some horror stories). Now, I'm not a total granola-chick, but I do think that there are some things that we can do ourselves, rather than rely on a quick fix, because once you do that, after a while, the body just uses it as a crutch and becomes immune to the effects, and you'll need stronger doses of whatever you were taking originally. The mister is now used to me saying "listen to your body. if you're tired, don't use a sleeping pill, take a calcium/vitamin D and magnesium with some warm milk. The tryptophan in the milk will calm you down and the magnesium and calcium will help the restlessness in your legs...if you're tired and need a pick me up, eat something with Vitamin B in it.." Yes, for us, these things work like magic, it's amazing.
Anyway, I'm pretty good at using natural remedies for things, but this beast sitting in my head and chest would not go away, so I decided to look for the white coats. Plus, I was concerned because I had serious pneumonia twice in my life and I really didn't want to go through that again.
The NHS here is pretty great- very organised, very honest, and free. Some of the state tax that we pay here goes into making sure that you're taken care of. You have the option of paying for "private" medical care (which is the equivalent of you taking $600/month out of your salary in the US to pay for general health care), but if you don't, you're still fine. It's a good feeling.
I went into my doctor's office and in between fits of coughing, I explained to him what I had. He listened to my lungs, felt my glands, looked at my throat, took my temperature, etc. And he said, work for word:
There's nothing wrong with you other than the fact you have a bad cold and a bit of sinus congestion. Plus, you're tired. You just need to rest, steam your face over a pot of boiling water with some eucalyptus, and have some chicken soup.
Umm...if this were in the US, I wouldn't have been in the office for more than 10 minutes before my doctor would've prescribed me an antibiotic, given me some cough suppressant, given me a cough expectorant*, and handed me a handful of samples for a revolutionary antidepressant that just came on the market, for good measure.
*I'm not kidding, this actually happened to the mister- my doctor that I used to have (an NYU physician with a great record) gave my mister once for his cough- both a cough suppressant, AND an expectorant (one to stop the cough, one to remove the phlegm) to take at the same time. When I saw what he gave him, I immediately threw them both in the trash and helped him get better MY way. Ridiculous.
Well, after I asked this doctor if he's sure, he said just ride it out. Let your body build up its defenses against stuff like this. You don't need a flu shot, no one does. But everyone is so scared to get sick, they don't let their bodies build themselves up on their own.
I left there feeling a tiny bit skeptical, but really energised. And I came home and made chicken soup from scratch, and huddled under a blanket watching movies like Atonement, surrounded by snotty tissues. Two days of that, and I'm sat here almost back to normal, with colour back in my cheeks.
I keep forgetting the lesson that my body tries to teach me sometimes: it's okay to take a break. It's okay to rest. Your job isn't going to fall apart just because you took two days to heal. And when I do let it repair itself, it does. Our bodies are amazing machines that I think a lot of us take for granted. We're made from pretty solid stuff, and I'm happy that I was reminded of that the other day.
Now, my question is... what are the healing properties of chocolate and Gin & Tonics, pray tell...
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