Avivah Werner

Category: Healthy Living

  • Homemade herbal facial steam treatment

    My dd14 was reading a new book on herbs that I recently bought, Rosemary Gladstar’s Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Health.  I got this because it had so many recipes and seemed user friendly, and so far I’m very pleased with it (though naturally it arrived immediately after I finished making all of my glycerites).  Yesterday she asked me about several herbs that were in a recipe she was interested in preparing, for an herbal facial steam. 

    We didn’t have all the ingredients, but I told her she was welcome to use anything I had on hand.  She used the following, which is a mixture for normal to oily skin:

    • 3 parts comfrey
    • 1 part raspberry leaves
    • 1 part sage
    • 1/4 part rosemary

    It also called for 2 parts calendula, but I didn’t have any.  She mixed up a batch and put it in a glass canning jar to store it and tonight prepared some for a relaxing facial steam.  What that means is that you throw a handful of the mixed herbs into a pot that contains 2 – 3 quarts of boiling water, then cover it and let it simmer for a couple of minutes.  Then she took the pot to the dining room table, sat down and leaned over the pot, and covered her head and the pot with a bath towel to create a mini steam tent.  (You can periodically lift the towel a bit if it gets too hot for you.)

    She steamed for six minutes and then emerged invigorated, with her face dripping from sweat.  I figured while the pot was hot I’d try it, too!  That was a very pleasant experience, and as I breathed in the herbal vapors, they felt very soothing and healing internally, too. 

    Right after I finished I rinsed my face with cold water and then my mom came by.  I suggested she try it, too!  She did, and I gave her a neck massage for a couple of minutes while she steamed.  Then ds16 tried it (the pot stayed hot for a while!).   A short while after he finished he came to ask me if I noticed a difference in my skin, and I told him I hadn’t paid any attention.  He said his skin was visibly clearer and blackheads were gone.    (Dd9 popped out of bed when she heard my mom come by and she tried it, too, not wanting to be left out – but I don’t think she thought much of it one way or the other.)

    This was a relaxing, fun, and frugal way to treat myself to some nurturing self-care right in the comfort of home!

    Avivah

  • Making vitamin capsules

    My computer is still down so I’m sorry I can’t post more often – I miss being here daily!  We’re going to call another computer expert in since the first one can’t figure out what’s wrong. 

    I got my most recent order of herbs, and I got something new this time (well, actually I always get something new :)) that we’re putting to use today – I ordered kosher capsules and a capsule ‘machine’ to make filling them easy.  These are already lending themselves to more uses than I expected!

    I got the capsules to make using powdered herbs easy, basically the food herbs that are hard to take in large enough amounts when using as more than casual spicing.  But after getting it, I realized that we could use them for the powdered vitamin C (sodium ascorbate) that we use – until now we mixed it into juice but I use pretty massive doses when the kids are under the weather and they don’t  love taking it.  They don’t hate it, either, but finding a more pleasant way that works for everyone seemed to be a good idea.  And when dd14 started to fill them, she asked me if she should add some bioflavonoids to the mix.  (I bought the powdered bioflavonoids last year because it was the only form I found them kosher, but it is nasty tasting.  So none of us ever use it, even though you’re supposed to take the sodium ascorbate with it to maximize absorption.)  I thought that was a great idea, so now the kids have made over 300 capsules of this vitamin C mix – they used 4 parts sodium ascorbate to 1 part bioflavonoids.  Each capsule is about 500 mg and easy to take.

    The next capsules they prepared today were: ginger, tumeric, and cinnamon.  Dd14 has an extra bone in her foot that is causing her pain when walking, and I’ve been taking her to the podiatrist every 3 weeks since she got back from camp this summer.  He has been trying low intervention ways to deal with the issue, but at the last visit he said the inflammation is interfering.  He prescribed a local anti-inflammatory patch, but my insurance wouldn’t cover it and I’m not so sure I want to use it anyway.  (It would be over $200 every couple of weeks, if I do choose to try it.)  Dh asked him why he doesn’t just tell dd to stay off her feet for a week, and the doc said that wasn’t realistic.  I couldn’t believe I didn’t think of anything so obvious!  Instead I started researching natural anti-inflammatories.  Some of those are tumeric and ginger, and she’ll start taking the capsules today.  I think that this will take longer than the medical patch, but I’m more comfortable with it and so is she.  And of course we’re encouraging her to stay off her foot as much as possible.  Hopefully this two pronged approach will be helpful.

    Since I know someone is going to ask, I got the capsules from Mountain Rose Herbs – a bag of 1000 was $23 (I got size 00), and the capsule filling machine was $13.  You  can buy less, but this size bag was a good idea – my dd9 (her birthday is today :)) told me that if each of us has 2 vitamin c capsules a day, all that they prepared will last us just a month.  🙂

    Avivah

  • Homemade Oral Rehydration Solution

    I posted this the day before the hacking situation and didn’t initially realize this post was lost when the system went down.  Though I said that I wouldn’t repost anything, I’m reposting this because I think it’s a valuable thing to have on hand.

    These are notes that I made for myself that I’m sharing.  I’m obviously not a health care practitioner and like all that I post about, this is what I would do if I found myself with a family member dehydrated to help them. 

    Here are several versions, basically all the same idea:

    Homemade Oral Rehydration Solution

    1) 1/2 t. salt, 2 T. honey/ sugar, 1/4 t. potassium chloride; 1/2 t. trisodium citrate (can be replaced by baking soda), 1 quart clean water

    2) 3 T. sugar/honey, 1 t. salt, 1 quart water

    3) 8 t. sugar/honey, 1 t. salt,  1 quart water

    Here are signs of dehydration: weakness, headache, fainting, dryness of mouth, decreased saliva, lack of/decreased urine that is dark and highly concentrated, sunken eyes, loss of skin elasticity, low blood pressure (especially upon sitting up or standing), fast pulse when laying down or sitting up.

    If you suspect dehydration is developing, administer the rehydration solution by mouth.  If the patient is too ill to drink, give drop by drop, work up to a teaspoon if possible.  Don’t stop until patient can keep down one quart.

    How much solution is needed?  Adults and large children should drink at least three quarts of oral rehydration solution a day until well.  Each feeding: for a child under 2 – between 1/4 – 1/2 large cup; for older children – between 1/2 – 1 large cup.

    If the  child vomits, wait ten minutes and then begin again.  Feed slowly, small sips at a time by teaspoon.  The body will retain some fluids and salts needed even though there is vomiting.  Extra liquids should be given until diarrhea stops. 

    Hopefully none of you will need this, but as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, this was very helpful to me when my dd8 got dehydrated on Shabbos and started repeatedly throwing up. 

    Avivah

  • Making first aid salve

    In the beginning of the summer, I shared how we made a salve for poison ivy.  That worked well, but we discovered one problem with it – since we used coconut oil as the base for it, it became liquid at the summer temps.  Then when we put it in the fridge, it would be hard as a rock when we took it out.  We managed with this, and the salve was great.  But one day when it was in its liquified state, someone knocked the open container over and it all spilled out.  And that was the end of that salve. 🙁

    So I wanted to make another salve, but decided to improve upon what we did last time – namely to improve the consistency and make it less greasy.  I decided to base this recipe on the ingredient list of the all purpose salve that I bought last year.   Going along with the premise that the first ingredients listed are used more heavily, I weighted the herbs I included accordingly. The basic formula for a salve that I used is 3 T. herbs, 2 c. of oil, and 1 1/2 oz beeswax. (Note – in my opinion this isn’t enough beeswax.)

    I chose the following herbs: comfrey – 1 part, plantain – 1 part, echinacea leaves -.5 part, yarrow  – .5 part, and a few olive leaves thrown in for kicks.  🙂  I made four times the recipe above.  I simmered the herbs in oil for a couple of hours, then strained them out.  That gives you herbal infused oil.  Then you mix the beeswax into the infused oil.  I used pastilles (tiny little beeswax balls) that I bought for this purpose.

    (A little off topic, but I ended up buying a huge amount of beeswax – I was going to buy a pound but saw that after shipping, it was $15.  And for $35 I was able to buy eight pounds including shipping from a different site – I had a frugal struggle with myself, trying to decide if it was better to spend less money or to get substantially more for my money – and now I  have enough beeswax for the rest of my life.  I think I’ll have to find a new hobby to use it up or my greatgrandchildren will be making herbal salves to take home with them when they visit me!)

    The beeswax didn’t mix in well the first time I melted it – it melted but solidified in a layer on top of the oil.  When the pot with all its ingredients were remelted, it mixed in nicely – I don’t know why it needed a second melting.  After the mixture cools, you can decide if it’s the consistency you like.  If it’s too loose, add some more wax; if it’s too thick, add some more oil.  I wanted it a little firmer so I added about another 3/4 cup of pastilles (it was late and I didn’t feel like measuring it exactly), and remelted the whole batch another two times so it could be mixed in.  At the end I also added the last little bit of an aromatherapy oil mix that I’ve had around for about ten years from my doula days.

    This morning my ds16 put all of the salve into jars – we now have about eight cups of salve.  (After he put it into the jars, he told me he thinks we should add a little more beeswax to make it firmer.  I told him that suggestion would have been more useful before he put everything in jars!  But it can be remelted and the wax added if I want to do that.)  I ordered different sized tins to package this in, but they haven’t yet arrived, which is why it’s all been transferred to glass jars.   I made a very large amount because I want to give this as gifts for Chanuka, but the basic recipe above will give you a nice amount.  It’s the kind of salve that most people would find valuable to have around, and to buy a 4 oz can of a similar salve would be about $17.  Using that as a baseline price, ds16 calculated the retail value for what we made to be $271!  It was a fraction of that to make it ourselves.

    We tried it out first thing today – our cat got a bad cut on his foot sometime during the early morning, deep enough to see the bone.  So dd8 doctored him up (yes, my eight year old daughter does what I’m too squeamish to do :)).  He licked off the first salve she applied, and kicked off the strip of cotton that she tried to tie it on with, but she applied another thick layer and he left it on.  Even though he was clearly in pain, he seemed to appreciate her putting it on.  This should significantly accelerate the healing.

    This salve is good for all kinds of cuts, abrasions, bug bites, itching, and diaper rash.  Good for kids, adults, or even pets.  Very useful stuff!

    Avivah

  • How to make elderberry syrup

    Last night I made my first batch of elderberry syrup.  It is filled with antioxidants and is good for preventing colds or treating them, depending when you take it.  I bought dried elderberries online, but if you are able to pick them fresh locally, all the better!  Here’s how simple it is to make:

    Elderberry syrup

    • 1/2 c. dried elderberries (or 1 c. fresh)
    • 1 cinnamon stick (optional)
    • 3 c. water
    • 1 c. honey

    Put the berries in a pot and cover with water.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat and cover.  Let simmer for 30 – 45 minutes.  Mash the berries with a potato masher, and strain through a fine strainer.  Add honey while liquid is hot, stir, and bottle.  Keep in the fridge – should last 2 – 3 months when refrigerated.

    I made four times this recipe and I ended up with three full quarts plus one 16 oz honey jar. I forgot to mash the berries, but since they were dried to start with, I think this was probably less important than when using fresh berries.  I added the cinnamon sticks because they taste good, but also because cinnamon kills bacteria and is great for fighting infections.   I used crystallized honey that was sitting around not being used because the kids said it doesn’t taste as good when it’s crystallized.

    Here’s a breakdown of the cost to make it: I bought the dried elderberries for 7.95 lb, and used 2/3 of that (wanted to save some to tincture), so the berries were $5.30.  I used three cups of honey, and if I figured the cost correctly, each cup was $3.33 cup.  That seems high to me (I thought I paid about 2.50 per cup, less when I recently bought small 16 oz containers for 1.99 each), but I based it on googling how many cups of honey are in a gallon (supposedly nine); I buy a gallon/twelve pound container for $30.  So the honey was $10.  I’ll add in .14 for the cinnamon sticks, since I got a container that had thirteen sticks in it for .88 so each stick rounds up to .07.  The total for 12.5 cups of elderberry syrup came out to 15.44.

    When you consider 4 fl. oz of Sambucol costs around $12.99, or to use their cheaper price for a larger bottle, 7.8 oz is $21.99, that’s a real bargain! Elderberry syrup from Mountain Rose Herbs is similarly priced with a 4 oz bottle being $13.25.  To put it further into perspective, 4 oz is about a quarter of a cup and 8 oz is half a cup – so I’m getting about thirty five times as much for the same price (my price for 1/4 c. is .31; 1/2 c. is .62).

    Because this has a limited shelf life and I don’t want to use up my fridge space hosting three quart sized jars for months, for immediate use I kept one quart plus the little honey jar, and canned the other two quarts so I can keep them on a shelf out of the fridge.

    This can be given when a child is showing signs of the cold or a flu, a tablespoon every hour or two, or you can give them a teaspoon each morning as a general immune strengthener.  This could easily be added to tea or (if you let the water boil down more so the final result is thicker) poured on top of pancakes or waffles.  Getting kids to have some of this isn’t hard at all.  This morning we gave the younger kids a teaspoon each, and a minute after ds3 got his spoonful, he came back holding out a cup and asked for a cupful!

    Avivah

  • Making a poison ivy remedy

    My ds10 showed me on Shavuos that he has a very bad rash between his fingers, which was super itchy.  (My kids have a way of only telling me about things like this on Shabbos or yom tov, when I can’t do much about it.)  He said he was sure it was poison ivy.  I asked why he thought so, and he told me he pulled out poison ivy with his bare hands when he saw it growing in the yard.  When I asked what made him do that, he said he planned to wash his hands after he pulled it out but forgot.  I mentioned that we have plenty of garden gloves that would be useful for something like this, but he said it was too much work to go into the garage to get them.  When I said we had pairs right on the back porch, too, he said that would have been too much work, too!

    So not surprisingly, he now has a very unpleasant case of poison ivy.  I have a recipe in my notebook for a poison ivy remedy that I’ve never made, and decided that it would be instructive for him to prepare it himself.  The recipe called for just three ingredients: burdock root, plantain, and comfrey.  I have comfrey in my small collection of herbs, and burdock and plantain growing wild in the yard.

    His best friend came over early in the day, and I sent them both out to harvest the herbs.  Plantain is easy to pick, but the burdock roots are long and skinny so it’s a bit of a job to dig them.  He discovered that using a full sized shovel made the job a lot faster than using a trowel.  Once they came in with enough of the herbs (I had to send them back out a couple more times), I had ds peel the burdock roots and chop them up, then wash the plantain leaves and chop them up. 

    He put a cup of burdock and a cup of plantain into a pot with 1/3 cup of dried comfrey.  (The recipe called for equal amounts of each herb in the dried form, so I figured we should use about triple the amount of fresh herbs so it would be the right balance.)  He put enough coconut oil into the pot to cover the herbs, and then let it simmer on low for a couple of hours.  (You can also use Vaseline, or a combination of virgin olive oil and beeswax instead of the coconut oil, but for simplicity, health, and it’s powerful antifungal/antibacterial properties, I prefer coconut oil.)  After it cooked for a while and the herbs were starting to get crispy, dd14 strained it out (he had to leave for his baseball game, or he would have done this, too) and put it in a small glass jar to cool.  We made about 9 oz of salve.   

    When he got home from his game, the mixture had solidified, and he put some on his hands.  Very soon he told me that the itching was much less and the irritated red skin was noticeably less inflamed.  After a couple of hours, I suggested he apply some more, and within an hour he told me it was much, much better.   I’ll have him continue to apply it until the rash is entirely gone; I’m hopeful with the help of the salve that it will be pretty quick.

    When I placed my last bulk herb order a number of months ago, I ordered a 4 oz can of herbal salve that was good for general antibiotic use, stings, etc, and paid $16.95 for it.  This was a bit of a splurge for me but it seemed like a valuable item to have around.  And it has been very useful for diaper rashes, chapped skin, cuts – it’s been helpful for a number of things, and I also bought a small 1 oz container to keep in my purse.  Four ounces lasts a lot longer than you might expect – we still have almost half of the container left, even after using it frequently. 

    We checked the ingredients in the salve that I bought, and saw that it contained both comfrey and plantain, along with three other ingredients.  We realized that the salve we made can easily substitute for the one we purchased in terms of practical usage (reducing skin inflammation, itchiness, healing cuts, diaper rash).  But this cost us a LOT less – the herbs we picked were obviously free, the amount of comfrey we used was probably less than 50 cents, and I bought the expeller pressed coconut oil in a 5 gallon bucket for about $80 a while back (price has gone up since).  Since there are 80 cups in 5 gallons, and I used a cup for this recipe, the cost of the oil was $1.   I’m not going to figure out how much gas we used for two hours on the lowest setting when cooking it, but let’s say that it cost another $1.  That means for less than $2.50 I was able to make a comparable salve to what would have cost me $34 if purchased retail.  We also realized how easy it would be to slightly change the recipe to make a salve that has the same ingredients as the one we purchased; while it would be slightly more expensive, since we’d need to use other herbs that we purchased in bulk instead of harvested ourselves, it would still be only an additional $2 for the entire batch. 

    If you want to make a healing wash instead of a salve, use water instead of oil and follow the same directions.  Use the herbal wash to rinse the affected area periodically. 

    It was fun and educational for him to make this and see how easy it is to take care of your own health.  And this batch should last us for quite a long time!

    Avivah

  • Harvesting plantain leaves

    About a week and a half ago my dd8 got a splinter in her finger, and she didn’t want me to pry around with a needle because it was too sore.  I’ve heard that putting a banana peel on it is a great way to draw out the splinter, but naturally, though I usually have bananas around, right then I didn’t have any.

    I considered if I had any other options, and this is what I did.  I told her to soak her finger in warm water, and then to go outside and pick some plantain.  Do you know what plantain looks like?  It’s a common weed that grows all over the place here, maybe all over the US, I don’t know.  The Native Americans used to call it white man’s foot, or broad foot, because wherever the white man travelled, plantain would grow. 

    I don’t know much about identifying weeds or wild plants, but a few years ago I was on a nature hike with the kids and the guide pointed it out.  He pointed out other things, too, that I didn’t remember.  But this one was memorable because he had said it was good for a number of things, including bee stings.  A little later on that hike, a little girl got a bee sting and he immediately picked some, smashed it to a pulp with a rock, and applied it to her sting.  She calmed down very quickly.

    Not long after that, I was attending my then sixth grade son’s baseball game.  At that age, most of the parents don’t attend the game, but I went to every game.  One of his fifth grade teamates was stung by a wasp on his hand, and it was so painful that he couldn’t hold a ball or bat.  There was no other adult to help him and even though he was trying to act like it wasn’t a big deal, I could tell it really was hurting.  So I picked some plantain, told him it needed to be chewed or smashed with a rock before applying it, and he willingly chewed it and put it on his sting.  I thought I must have seemed like a weirdo to him and wondered if it would really help, but I needn’t have worried.  He told me after a minute that his hand felt normal and was very appreciative – and he thought it was cool, not weird.

    Plantain is good for lots of things, and I thought it might draw out the splinter, too.  So I told dd to wrap it around her finger and put a bandaid on top to hold it on.  We couldn’t find the splinter the next day when we took it off, so I guess it worked. 

    Today I asked ds10 to pick some to make a salve with (I’ll share details of that with you tomorrow when it’s finished and I see how it works), and asked dd8to pick a bunch of it to dehydrate it for future use – it’s good for a lot of things, it’s free and easily available, so I figure, why not take advantage of it and stock my home grown medicine cabinet supplies? 🙂

    Avivah

  • Heartburn remedy

    A few nights ago I had terrible heartburn, something which I rarely experience.  The first night it was so bad that I started to throw up when I laid down to go to sleep; moving quickly from a prone position to upright is physically painful for me at this stage, but believe me, I got up fast!  I don’t know what is causing it now – I’m assuming it’s connected to being late in pregnancy – but it was mighty unpleasant.  Here’s a little experiment I did that was successful in dealing with it.

    I keep a small container of baking soda in my bathroom to brush my teeth with (baking soda has tons of uses – I just bought a 50 lb bag when I did my monthly shopping last week – I think it should last me just about the rest of my life, don’t you? :)).  Since it was so late at night and I didn’t feel like going downstairs to look up what to do about heartburn, I decided to try mixing some baking soda with water and drinking it and see if it would work.  (I’d estimate the measurements to be about 1 t. of baking soda to a cup of water.)  I’ve used this for very quick relief of indigestion in the past, but didn’t know if it would work for heartburn. 

    I’m happy to say that it worked very quickly, and very well, and I was able to fall asleep without any further discomfort after a couple of minutes.  So now I have one more effective use of baking soda to add to my list!

    Avivah

  • Herbs for asthma

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    To all of those who checked in since midnight, if you were wondering why my most recent post under this title seemed incomplete, it’s because it was!  Somehow half of it was deleted, and for technical reasons I had to delete the entire post and resubmit it from scratch, which meant that comments attached to the original were also deleted.  Sorry about that!

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    Three years ago, I got really sick with a bad case of bronchitis that lasted over two months.  For the rest of that winter, I couldn’t breathe freely in the cold air, but then the spring came and all my symptoms disappeared.

    Until the following winter, when I started having problems breathing again.  I  had to wrap up very well when I went outside, with my mouth covered, and then it would take me about 20 minutes of not saying anything, while holding a cup of hot tea in front of my mouth, to be able to breathe freely again.  I would have uncontrollable coughing until my lungs warmed up.  I didn’t pay much attention to it, just figured it was some kind of residual thing from the bronchitis the year before. 

    Then this winter came along.  And this year even I couldn’t wave it off –  it seemed to have gotten progressively worse from last year.  After five minutes outside in the cold (and by that I mean in my car, not literally outside), and it would take forty minutes of coughing and wheezing until I could breathe normally. I couldn’t even stand in front of my open door in the winter while inside my house without having coughing spasms.  In the nighttime, I dreaded laying down, because as soon as I did, the coughing started.  And I would cough so hard that I couldn’t stop, and had to sit up.  It would often take an hour of coughing until I was so exhausted I could fall asleep. 

    I was feeling very incapacitated by this, and I became almost afraid of cold air.  I’ve always been a pretty hardy person, and it bothered me to feel so delicate.  When I went somewhere, it was pretty noticeable, and I was always being asked if I was sick. Two separate friends asked me if I had asthma, to which I of course answered no, even though my symptoms were so similar. But that got me thinking, and I started researching.

    I felt like I hit pay dirt when I learned that asthma can develop as a result of severe respiratory infections.  Once I knew what I was dealing with, I decided to buy some herbs to treat my symptoms (remember that big order of herbs a while back?).  Among the other herbs I got were lobelia and mullein.  I made a blend of equal parts of each, (maybe 1 T. each), put them in a piece of muslin, and tied it off at the top.  Then I let it steep in about two cups of boiling water for about fifteen minutes, and drank it. 

    It wasn’t delicious – it has an unpleasant ticklish feeling going down – but it wasn’t  horrible, either.  And I didn’t have any more coughing for several days.  But I wasn’t quick to ascribe any special significance to this, even though it was unusual, because I didn’t want to fall prey to wishful thinking.  But then a few nights later, I went out in the evening, and there was no problem at all.  That I did take note of, because the week before going to the same place, I had thought to myself that I should probably stop going out in the evenings at all because it was causing me so much discomfort.  I had another cup of the same mixture when I felt a slight tightness in my chest around then.

    A week later, I was out at my regular Sunday night meeting, and I spent a half hour chatting outside afterwards with a friend in the cold air.  No coughing, nothing.  I was just cold.  🙂  That was almost two months ago, and that has been the coldest part of the year; since then, I’ve had no night time coughing, no coughing in cold air – nothing.  It honestly feels like a miracle – I’m not saying that lightly.  After three years and feeling like this was a problem I was going to have the rest of my life, it just ended after three cups of this herbal tea, with the only cost being a few teaspoonfuls of dried herbs (less than two dollars’ worth).

    My ds15 was diagnosed with sports asthma last year, which basically means that when it’s cold or he is very active, his breathing gets labored and his chest feels tight.  When he complained about it to me about eight weeks ago, I gave him the same thing I had taken.  He hasn’t complained since then.  I asked him last night how he’s been feeling before writing this, wanting to be accurate, and he said that though he occasionally feels out of breath when he runs around a lot, otherwise he’s been fine.  He used to have a hard time catching his breath even after walking to shul in the morning, and he said since he had the tea it hasn’t been a problem (and he walks every morning, no matter how cold it is).  I think it’s likely that if he drank some a bit more often, he wouldn’t even experience this, but he knows what to do if he feels he needs it.  I guess it’s a statement of success that he doesn’t feel the need to take anymore of it!

    I wouldn’t say this is going to work for everyone, but I would definitely encourage anyone suffering from asthma-like symptoms to try it.  It can’t hurt, and it might even hugely help. 🙂

    Avivah

  • Late night with coughing child

    I’ve been up with my 8 year old daughter, who was coughing repeatedly until she threw up, so I didn’t have a chance to post tonight (I guess it’s officially last night by now, since it’s almost 2 am).  I gave her tea (with mullein, lobelia, apple cider vinegar, and honey), I gave her homemade cough syrup, I gave her a hot water bottle to keep her chest warm, I gave her a homeopathic remedy – no luck.  She kept coughing so hard that she wasn’t keeping anything down for more than a couple of minutes.  I think all of those things would have been helpful if I had heard her coughing earlier in the evening, though. 

    Finally at 12:45 am, I told her to get out of bed and into a nice hot bath, which she did.  I wanted to give the steam a chance to relax her chest and give her a break from all the coughing.  After she was in for a while and I told her she could come out, I gave her Vick’s to rub on her chest.  (I was so happy to find it – I was hunting all over the house for it this entire time and getting annoyed that I couldn’t find it – you know, ‘where is something when I need it!?!’- when I opened my kids’ medicine cabinet, and what do you know?  It was sitting right there all along – it didn’t even occur to me to look where it was supposed to be!)

    After she finished getting dressed, I rubbed more Vick’s on her neck, and covered it with a scarf that I designated a while ago for this purpose but never used since then. Then I put some Vick’s on her feet, and had her put socks over it. 

    After all of that, I gave her a refilled water bottle, brought her to my room for the night (where I can keep an eye and ear on her if she needs me), and propped her right in front of the heater to relax.  I gave her some easy chapter books to choose from, and put on the classical music station in the background, after covering her with a nice thick blanket.  And just in case, I put a container next to her in case she feels like throwing up again. 🙂  I left her there cheerful and relaxed, and told her I needed to finish cleaning up the kitchen and a couple more things, and would be right up.  Which is where I’m going now.

    So that’s why I couldn’t post earlier, but I wanted to get here before I get to bed and say hi!

    Avivah