There’s a line in one of my favorite movies, The Princess Bride, where Count Rugen says to Prince Humperdinck, “Get some rest. If you haven’t got your health, you haven’t got anything.”
I’ve been acutely aware of that in the past week because I’ve been knocked down with a sinus infection/upper-respiratory infection, and then, just when I was feeling that I was out of the woods, I got a stomach virus as a little bonus.
It’s easy to take good health for granted. I’m rarely sick; I have a slew of sick days accumulated at work.
We’ve passed this virus around in the family, but who knows if it’s the same one? My sweet 19-month-old granddaughter had cold symptoms and a double ear infection on Christmas. From there, her daddy and mommy got sick; then I got sick, and her cousins and uncle and aunt got sick.
My parents, thankfully, escaped the scourge. So did my husband, the best caregiver I know.
After I started getting sick, besides feeling like someone had poured concrete up my nose, it clutched me by the throat, too. My voice started getting raspy. Then I couldn’t talk at all. Quiet is an unnatural state for me; I even talk in my sleep sometimes.
Thanks to a steroid shot and antibiotics, I was feeling better. Then the nausea hit the next night, and I had one of those moments sitting on the cold bathroom floor when I wondered if this actually might be the way I die.
When I joined the living again, we cleaned and cleaned. My husband bought antibacterial wipes, and I used them to wipe down everything — light switches, door handles and the refrigerator door. The cleaning was so thorough, I would have loved to have had a CSI crew come in and try to find a fingerprint.
It is the lingering cough that is driving me crazy. It’s that throat tickle that won’t stop until you cough, and cough, and cough. Over-the-counter cough syrup is about like water. I searched on my iPhone for home remedies for coughing, and I knew there would be a lot of whiskey-and-honey combinations. I don’t like the strong stuff, so I put honey in my tea. It helped for a few minutes when I was drinking it. Then back to coughing.
A big part of my job is talking, so that was my challenge last week. During one phone interview, the woman said, “Bless your heart” as I coughed and rasped my way through my questions.
Days later, during an interview with a city official, I coughed so hard I nearly passed out. The cough drops weren’t any more effective than candy.
Then I stumbled onto something on Facebook — you know, that bastion of truth. The article said chocolate had been found to be as effective as cough medicine in soothing vocal cords and slowing a cough.
I did a little research and found there are studies that show
chocolate can calm coughs. An alkaloid in cocoa supposedly suppresses coughs more than codeine by sticking to the nerve endings in the throat, blocking the trigger to cough.
However, it won’t work by just eating chocolate or drinking
hot chocolate, the study said. It’s sucking on the chocolate to coat the throat that helps.
I’m already experimenting. This is a home remedy I can put my weight behind — literally. Half a bag of Hershey’s dark-chocolate kisses later, I’m feeling much better.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.