I'm sick, which is awful. I took a friend to a hospital on Saturday and ended up with a mild form of what she has, namely, tonsillitis and bronchitis. I'm not big on taking antibiotics unless it's serious so I'm riding it out, which means I am taking Chinese herbal medicine and sucking down a whole lot of horehound to boot. I'm not dissing the antibiotics, by the way, it's just that I have in the past been treated with such HUGE HUGE doses of them for months on end that I've developed allergies to several, and I'm never qui--iii-ite sure the pharmacist gets that when filling a prescription written by a doctor who probably thought I was kidding when I mimed "HIDEOUS RASH AND THROAT CLOSURE FOLLOWED BY SEIZURES AND DEATH."
I started coughing like hell this afternoon and actually left work, a first in my teaching career. Dry racking coughs are no fun. By the time I got home a fever had sprung up as well. Ayi--the one who looks like a Chinese Oprah--rushed off to the pharmacy to pick up some medicine.
If you have a cold, there is a powdered drink mix which, when mixed with hot water, tastes like sweetened dog shit, hence my name for it, Dog Shit Tea. It works, but it's awful. Since I have a cough, I am off oranges or anything orange-flavored, on advice of the physician in the herbalist office. (Seriously, I have friends who won't let their children eat or drink anything flavored with oranges in the wintertime lest they develop a cough from it!) The pharmacist sent Ayi home with some herbal tablets: I had to crunch up six of them in my mouth, to be swallowed down with a healthy swig of all-purpose Chinese cough syrup. No water. None. I was allowed to rinse my mouth out but Ayi forced me to spit it out into a garbage can. I had asked Ayi to buy me Mrs. Pearl's Cough Syrup, which is sold over the counter and contains laudanum, but she returned with the generic all-purpose bottle of Chuange Qingfei Tangjiang, which interestingly enough contains a picture of garlic on the bottle as well as on the box. That mother works, because I stopped coughing in ten minutes and was out like a light in 20.
Ayi tidied up and took the dogs for a walk, no easy task as they didn't want to leave my side. Princess Doggy actually snapped at Ayi when she took Princess off the bed, but when the dogs realized they were going out to the butcher to buy meat with their beloved they quickly left, dancing with joy. The Little Emperor has a hurt paw (which Ayi treated with massage) and spent most of the time outdoors being held aloft like a little precious prince. I am dead lucky to have Ayi and she frequently tells me so.
However, after she left, and I awoke from my coma-like state, I got up to brew some other remedies. I'm not sure what was in the cough syrup so I did not do the traditional Vin Grippe (dry red wine heated up with spices and a pinch of sugar and drunk down hot--the tannic acid blows the shit out of a cold) or a hot toddy (my mother used to make them for me when I was twelve, not sure why, but I was a mean child--bourbon, lemon, sugar or honey, and hot water.) I settled for another Chinese concoction, one which sounds horrible but is very very pleasant on a sore throat.
Take a knob of ginger the size of your little finger: peel, and cut into slices as large or small as your patience allows. Throw into a skillet with a small stick of cinnamon. Add a can of Coca-Cola and hit to boiling, keeping it just under the boil at a simmer for several minutes in order to extract the goodness from the ginger. Pour into a mug and top off with a shot of fresh lemon juice: float several wheels of lemon in there as well, and serve. This cuts through mucus and feels fantastic on inflamed tissues. Once the Coke is hot, it doesn't taste as sweet, so some people actually add sugar (usually brown) at this stage. Ugh. This, with a couple of aspirin, will see you through almost anything. I am having one right now, sans aspirin. I've seen this on the menu of several Hong Kong chain restaurants, usually by the title "Hot Cocoa Cola with Ginger and Lemon" but it deserves a far better name---Hot Monkey Lovin', perhaps?
I will scan the photos/boxes of all these items when I have a scanner that works again. I now have to chew up six pills and wash them down with a swig of cough syrup. The junkie in me lives for these moments. Don't expect any coherent posts for 24 hours or more. While I'm out, this would be a good time to start looking for a new man for me: I'm cute, I'm funny, I'm loyal, and I can cook one hell of a Macaroni and Cheese on a blow torch no less.
I started coughing like hell this afternoon and actually left work, a first in my teaching career. Dry racking coughs are no fun. By the time I got home a fever had sprung up as well. Ayi--the one who looks like a Chinese Oprah--rushed off to the pharmacy to pick up some medicine.
If you have a cold, there is a powdered drink mix which, when mixed with hot water, tastes like sweetened dog shit, hence my name for it, Dog Shit Tea. It works, but it's awful. Since I have a cough, I am off oranges or anything orange-flavored, on advice of the physician in the herbalist office. (Seriously, I have friends who won't let their children eat or drink anything flavored with oranges in the wintertime lest they develop a cough from it!) The pharmacist sent Ayi home with some herbal tablets: I had to crunch up six of them in my mouth, to be swallowed down with a healthy swig of all-purpose Chinese cough syrup. No water. None. I was allowed to rinse my mouth out but Ayi forced me to spit it out into a garbage can. I had asked Ayi to buy me Mrs. Pearl's Cough Syrup, which is sold over the counter and contains laudanum, but she returned with the generic all-purpose bottle of Chuange Qingfei Tangjiang, which interestingly enough contains a picture of garlic on the bottle as well as on the box. That mother works, because I stopped coughing in ten minutes and was out like a light in 20.
Ayi tidied up and took the dogs for a walk, no easy task as they didn't want to leave my side. Princess Doggy actually snapped at Ayi when she took Princess off the bed, but when the dogs realized they were going out to the butcher to buy meat with their beloved they quickly left, dancing with joy. The Little Emperor has a hurt paw (which Ayi treated with massage) and spent most of the time outdoors being held aloft like a little precious prince. I am dead lucky to have Ayi and she frequently tells me so.
However, after she left, and I awoke from my coma-like state, I got up to brew some other remedies. I'm not sure what was in the cough syrup so I did not do the traditional Vin Grippe (dry red wine heated up with spices and a pinch of sugar and drunk down hot--the tannic acid blows the shit out of a cold) or a hot toddy (my mother used to make them for me when I was twelve, not sure why, but I was a mean child--bourbon, lemon, sugar or honey, and hot water.) I settled for another Chinese concoction, one which sounds horrible but is very very pleasant on a sore throat.
Take a knob of ginger the size of your little finger: peel, and cut into slices as large or small as your patience allows. Throw into a skillet with a small stick of cinnamon. Add a can of Coca-Cola and hit to boiling, keeping it just under the boil at a simmer for several minutes in order to extract the goodness from the ginger. Pour into a mug and top off with a shot of fresh lemon juice: float several wheels of lemon in there as well, and serve. This cuts through mucus and feels fantastic on inflamed tissues. Once the Coke is hot, it doesn't taste as sweet, so some people actually add sugar (usually brown) at this stage. Ugh. This, with a couple of aspirin, will see you through almost anything. I am having one right now, sans aspirin. I've seen this on the menu of several Hong Kong chain restaurants, usually by the title "Hot Cocoa Cola with Ginger and Lemon" but it deserves a far better name---Hot Monkey Lovin', perhaps?
I will scan the photos/boxes of all these items when I have a scanner that works again. I now have to chew up six pills and wash them down with a swig of cough syrup. The junkie in me lives for these moments. Don't expect any coherent posts for 24 hours or more. While I'm out, this would be a good time to start looking for a new man for me: I'm cute, I'm funny, I'm loyal, and I can cook one hell of a Macaroni and Cheese on a blow torch no less.
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