thefourthvine | [Poll] Pathos

[Poll] Pathos

In this house, we have been sick so often, for so long, that I have actually grown weary of writing the words "I am sick." We are personally responsible for a worldwide tissue shortage and have cornered the market on throat lozenges and self-pity.

But I notice I'm not alone. My friends list appears to be unusually unwell, too. (Not my fault, guys. You can't catch these viruses via the internets.) So. A poll. To entertain us all as we sneeze and reach for the antipyretics.

Poll #6121 Sick, sick, sick

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 471

View Respondents

Are you sick right now?

View Answers

*couch* *hack* *wheeze*
156 (33.8%)

Why, no! The immune system gods have smiled upon me.
306 (66.2%)

Have you been sick at any time in 2011 so far?

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You should be asking me if there are days I haven't been sick in 2011.
52 (11.2%)

Yeah. A lot. I don't want to talk about it.
125 (26.8%)

I've had one minor illness this year.
160 (34.3%)

People in my household have been sick. Germ vectors, every one.
126 (27.0%)

No. And I will share my secrets in the comments.
99 (21.2%)

How do you treat a cold?

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Decongestants
277 (59.1%)

Neti pot
64 (13.6%)

Hot tea
343 (73.1%)

Lozenges
223 (47.5%)

Acupuncture or acupressure
13 (2.8%)

Menthol or eucalyptus goop
81 (17.3%)

Nasal spray
89 (19.0%)

Salt water gargling or snorting or whatever
101 (21.5%)

Steamy showers
264 (56.3%)

Vaporisers
42 (9.0%)

Vitamins
225 (48.0%)

Lots of fluids
402 (85.7%)

Chicken soup
186 (39.7%)

Ginger ale
112 (23.9%)

Ice cream
73 (15.6%)

Herbal soothers
39 (8.3%)

Alcohol
71 (15.1%)

Weeping
103 (22.0%)

Prolonged bouts of self-pity
302 (64.4%)

Something else I will tell you about in the comments
54 (11.5%)

Greatest enemy of the people?

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GERMS. Motherfucking GERMS.
194 (42.0%)

SNOW. Motherfucking SNOW.
104 (22.5%)

The sun. Its fierce eye burns us, precious.
89 (19.3%)

Penguins. Sneak attacking, death-dealing penguins of DOOM.
75 (16.2%)

We're going to name our house, like we're fancy British people. Pick a name!

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Snotsvilla
36 (8.0%)

Duncoughin
197 (44.0%)

Plague House
126 (28.1%)

Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here
129 (28.8%)

I have a better idea. To the comments!
16 (3.6%)

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I've had a mild cough/stuffy nose thing on and off since December, but it finally went away! You know what did it? Staying up 30 hours, and working more than half of that.

...I think I'm going to leave that as a last-ditch solution, though. I am not made of steel, and you apparently are.

Although Dante is never out of style, I vote for "Quarantine".

Also, fresh ginger infusion with lemon, cayenne peppeer and honey can help. I've heard.

I'm with you on the house name! The beverage, on the other hand, sounds like one of those things people would give you to drink and be secretly filming so they could put your reaction up on YouTube.

Heavily spiced foods always help me feel better when I'm congested. Also, waiting seems to do the trick.

When I have a sore throat or a cold, I crave nothing but spicy food: spicy beef soup (yukgaejang), chicken vindaloo, shui zhu yu.

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pocketmouse - 2011-02-27 02:08 (UTC) - Expand

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dont_panic42 - 2011-02-27 03:17 (UTC) - Expand

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thefourthvine - 2011-02-27 21:42 (UTC) - Expand

Two things (in addition to ones you mentioned) are CRUCIAL to treating/preventing colds:

1. Spicy food of whatever kind you like.

2. Hot Honey, Lemon and Ginger:
- take a glass measuring cup (any size from 1-4c)
- pour in a layer of honey (local if possible) as thick as your finger is thick, from 0.5-1 cm.
- pour in a layer of bottled lemon juice of equal thickness
- pour in water to fill the measuring cup
- add 2 thin slices of fresh ginger for each cup of water
- microwave until hot
- stir

Drink a lot of this.

#2 is better if it includes rum or whisky.

Edited (grammar is my friend) 2011-02-27 02:08 (UTC)

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isquiesque - 2011-02-27 02:49 (UTC) - Expand

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reginagiraffe - 2011-02-27 02:16 (UTC) - Expand

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foursweatervests - 2011-02-27 03:15 (UTC) - Expand

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thefourthvine - 2011-02-27 21:42 (UTC) - Expand

Have you been sick: I had strep throat once, so somewhere in between LOTS and ONE MINOR ILLNESS.

How I deal with colds: ignore it, mostly, and grouse about it and hope each night that when I wake up int the morning, it'll be gone.

As far as I'm concerned, strep throat counts as lots.

How I deal with colds: ignore it, mostly, and grouse about it and hope each night that when I wake up int the morning, it'll be gone.

The colds we've been getting lately would take this as an opportunity to grow more powerful than we could possibly imagine. These are some terrifying colds, is what they are. One of them lasted four weeks. *sulks*

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via_ostiense - 2011-02-28 21:48 (UTC) - Expand

To prevent the lingering illness, I take a washcloth (or rag) and get it wet with rubbing alcohol. I then go throughout my house and wash off every thing that gets handled:
doorknobs
faucets
light switches
mouse
keyboard
phone
fridge handles
stove knobs
etc.

It works great for preventing me from reinfecting myself.

I also use colloidal silver at the first hint of anything and for about 2 days after whatever I had ended. (This is often an unpopular thing to say in public because there is a lot of misinformation out there about colloidal silver. However, I can't remember the last time I was sick from germs for more than a day and usually, it's less than 12 hours.)

ETA: I rarely do the first since things don't linger but if I am sick for a couple of times in a few weeks period I'll do it or if something last more than 24 hours.

Edited 2011-02-27 02:06 (UTC)

This is often an unpopular thing to say in public because there is a lot of misinformation out there about colloidal silver.

You mean like the FDA's position on colloidal silver?

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jumpuphigh - 2011-02-27 02:23 (UTC) - Expand

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sporky_rat - 2011-02-28 00:45 (UTC) - Expand

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thefourthvine - 2011-02-27 21:45 (UTC) - Expand

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jumpuphigh - 2011-02-27 21:50 (UTC) - Expand

The family beverage for this sort of thing is hot Dr. Pepper with lemon. Yeah, I know, sounds weird. Good, though, and it coats a sore throat nicely. The drinkers in the family have been known to add rum or Triple Sec; they swear by it. But that may be just the alcohol talking. *g*

My personal recipe for anything clogging up the head is Chinese takeout, specifically hot & sour soup, which clears the congestion, and potstickers, which go down easily without irritating a sore throat and provide easily digestible sustenance with an adequate hit of protein, something I don't usually crave when ill.

I wish you all wellness. Soonest.

I don't mean to cast aspersions on your family traditions, but, Mal, I'm going to have to be really, really sick before I try hot Dr. Pepper.

I 100% approve of the Chinese Takeout Solution, though. Tasty, and it means you don't have to cook when you're sick! (With your permission, though, I will modify it to the Chinese Delivery Solution.)

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malnpudl - 2011-02-27 22:08 (UTC) - Expand

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thefourthvine - 2011-02-27 22:31 (UTC) - Expand

Oh, man - I practically remember my cold fondly (though not when I cough) since getting the PTSD-inducing GI norovirus. OMG, never leave me toilet and bucket! Even if I kind of never want to see either of you ever again!

But still, no more colds! We are done with colds! C'mon Vitamin D and warm weather, work your magic! We remember happy sinuses, they will come again!

I got norovirus at Wiscon a few years ago. I'd planned the trip so I did Wiscon and then flew on to Pennsylvania to see my family. I rented a car at Philadelphia airport, spent a night at a motel in King of Prussia, and did NOT get to drive upstate to visit anyone.

Instead I spent a week being vilely ill in a cheap motel. Not a good experience.

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thefourthvine - 2011-02-27 21:49 (UTC) - Expand

I get sick maybe twice a year, and if I have energy to expend, I will expend it cooking. Chocolate chilli, Thai curries - anything that'll drain my sinuses, you know? Also, I gargle alka-seltzer, because I have found it to be, by a mile, the most effective way of treating a sore throat. That and a great deal of tea and orange juice is how I get through colds.

Yes. Spicy foods! I didn't put this in as a potential cure only because we, um, mostly live on spicy foods, so I don't think of it as cold-specific behavior.

I was good until you made me choose between GERMS and SNOW.

Ech, if I never cough again in my entire life, it will be too soon.

Where I live, it never snows. I put the snow option in there because I like to make choices challenging for others!

But, yeah, coughing. I knew I had achieved something special in the cough line when, the last time I saw my PCP, she said, "I'm out of tricks. This is it, this is all I've got." And then she gave me a pamphlet for a specialty cough clinic in Laguna Beach.

Oh, God, the snow. Make it stop.

Feel better soon!

I live in Southern California, so I can only sympathize, not empathize, with your anti-snow position. But I have pretty much the same feeling about illness (MAKE IT STOP). I'm with you in spirit!

Yet another bad thing about depression is that it's hard to tell if I'm actually sick or just feeling normally crummy. Not many respiratory or gasto illnesses this year in our household, we dodged the bullet.

I'll take respiratory illnesses over depression any day of the week. You have my sympathies. (And I would offer you a hug, but, well, I'm pretty sure I'm contagious.)

Dayquil, man. That shit tastes nasty, but it works. (And if you drink it enough, you don't mind the taste so much - at least it's over quickly, vs. cough drops, which I can't even do at all. I suck on hard candies a bit if my throat's feeling dry, though.)

I no longer treat illnesses with alcohol. I did that once, and it turned a sniffle into a raging fever. Not to mention, there were some questionable decisions made that night...

I can't take DayQuil, sadly. (And, yeah, medicating a cold with alcohol is not, in my experience, that useful. For one thing, alcohol makes congestion much worse, so you have to drink enough that you don't care. And, boy, if there's one thing that would make a persistent, nagging, hacking cough even less fun, it would be a hangover.)

Snow? I went to the grocery store yesterday in sandals with no socks and enjoyed the blooming flowers. Ah, global warming, so nice in February, so hellish in August.

I've had a low-grade lingering cold that just seems to get worse every time I work on my final exams and my proofreading. I've been trying to treat it with sleep and liquids and vitamins and big pots of vegetable soup.

Yeah, no snow here, either. (I live in Southern California, where people were wearing parkas and gloves at the farmer's market this morning. It was 65 degrees out.) But I know others are suffering!

I approve of sleep and liquids and vitamins and vegetable soup. If they don't clear up the cold, at least you'll be well-rested, well-hydrated, and well-nourished!

I decline to answer on the grounds that this is the sort of hubris that gets one struck down by Ecchhechecechhh, Goddess of Effluvia.

Agreed.

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st_aurafina - 2011-02-27 03:50 (UTC) - Expand

Technically, my cold was the last week of 2010, but I still had a bit of snuffliness after Jan 1st so I'm going to count it.

I feel your pain. Except no, because my kid's older and can entertain herself as long as someone in the house is well enough to drive her to the library. I feel a fraction of your pain.

For the last five or six years, I've begun getting a pre-cold warning: a week or so of great unexplained fatigue, plus sometimes a little tingly proto-cold sore in the corner of my mouth. (Maybe I've always had this and am just now noticing? Learning from experience = not so much my strong suit, apparently.)

And I've noticed that if, when I first feel those symptoms, I go against all instinct and just camp out at the gym, doing yoga or the elliptical machine or any other sustained non-water exercise, sometimes I can head off the cold that way. (I tend to need a nap afterwards, of course.)

Swimming doesn't work, unfortunately.

My theory: exercise raises my body temperature a little bit, like a small controlled fever, and this kills viruses just like the real thing.

My theory: exercise raises my body temperature a little bit, like a small controlled fever, and this kills viruses just like the real thing.

I have heard this several times before re. occasional elevated body temp keeping one healthy. This is why saunas, sweat lodges, etc. have been quite popular through the years.

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calico - 2011-02-27 18:52 (UTC) - Expand

I coughed so hard I broke a rib.

I did that last winter!

*empathy*

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sporky_rat - 2011-02-28 00:53 (UTC) - Expand

I've only had a vaguely oogy feeling/pressure in my sinuses so far this year, but a couple of nights of good sleep and lots of vitamin C seems to have done the trick in keeping it from developing into much more.

In my experience, sleeping for about twelve hours and drinking a lot of peppermint tea with honey/lemon ginger tea with honey wards off an incipient cold. If I actually do get a cold though, I treat with decongestants, self-pity, and lots of sleep and fluids. I generally give myself at least one day of staying in, in the hopes that a full day of rest will keep any illness from lingering for longer than a week.

We've been lucky so far this year--with the exception of some minor sniffles--whilst those around us have dropped like flies. (Half my department was out sick this week. It was a ghost town around the office.)

But I felt nervous about clicking the "immune system gods have smiled upon me" button, because now I feel like I've tempted them and I'm doomed.

OJ. I mainline OJ at the first hint of sickness. Don't know that it works scientifically, but I believe in it.

1. Different hemisphere; different season
2. Lots of vitamin C regularly
3. Try and get good sleep regularly - sleep knits ravelled sleeve of care <-- antique poetic truth, ppl.
4. Walk or cycle every day ie keeping active is good for immune system.
5. Wash hands or use bug-killer hand wash after every trip on public transport
6. Never, ever touch my face with hands that have not been recently washed, particularly after touching stuff* on public transport or otherwise in public places.
7. Do not live with a small child or anyone who is in regular contact with small children. When I shared house with a primary school employee I got sick a lot. A LOT. Her immune system was like The Rock, if The Rock were an immune system due to constant exposure to the snot and spit of little persons. But she was my Typhoid Mary.

Obviously 7 is not an option for you.

These methods worked for me over the past couple of years.

*Not weird stuff! Seats and ticket machine buttons and the poles you hold to steady yourself and the bannisters when you're getting down off a particularly old, high step.

Edited (fix typo) 2011-02-27 02:55 (UTC)

Most of what she said, although I'm in the same hemisphere. OBSESSIVE HANDWASHING, PEOPLE.

Re: Wherein I share my secrets

copracat - 2011-02-27 04:07 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Wherein I share my secrets

wendelah1 - 2011-02-27 08:38 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Wherein I share my secrets

fleurrochard - 2011-02-27 11:59 (UTC) - Expand

Currently going through heatwave kinda weather here. Ok, not so much heatwave as just so damn muggy I hatehatehate it. :S

Gargling salt in hot water, fisherman's friend lozenges, lots of water, LOTS of self-pity. HOPE YOU GET BETTER SOON.

Colds: I treat them with hot lemon, ginger and honey - soothes the throat, rehydrates and makes me feel better. *adds votes for this remedy*

Naming the house: I gotta pimp for something inspirational rather than depressing; everything I've read says being happy and well loved boosts the immune system. In which case you probably need to name the house RETURN OF THE REVENGE OF SUPER-HEALTHY-WOMAN or something... ours is the House of B&D which stands for Books and Dogs/Ducks/Dykes depending on who we're talking to.

It's Fish's first year of preschool. I am reliably informed that the entire family will never be this sick in one year ever again. I don't know if I believe that, but I CLING TO THE IDEA.
I am weary of coughing. And sniffling. And eyeing the children wondering if it's just a virus or if they're infected with something more awful, then thinking that it's Friday night (why always on Friday? Why, Universe?) and if they're not dead by Sunday then we can see the doctor on Monday. They are always better on Monday.
Poor Bug (18 months) has been on antibiotics more times in her tiny life than Fish (almost 4). Preschoolers are disease vectors.

That's the way it worked for us. My my sister's kids are just entering their third year of outside care. The first two years were dire for the entire extended family, but last year was much better.

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