I finally had to break down and do it

I’m talking about going to the doctor, which I hate to do.  I always try home remedies first and usually only see the doctor once a year.  I keep a positive attitude and am always optimistic about things, even when times look bleak.  Usually I can fix whatever it is myself, but sometimes it takes the advice of a sister or friend.  This usually always works.

In mid-December I had to go to the doctor when I came home from work with a fever and still had it the next day.  I had a bad cold and a sinus infection.  I think I probably wrote about that in a previous post.  The situation now is a bad case of athlete’s foot I can’t get rid of.  I’ve been trying home remedies for the last few weeks.  I attribute this to having to wear socks and sneakers daily at work.  My feet do not like socks and closed-in shoes.  I like going barefoot and wearing my flip-flops.  The first thing to come off after work is the shoes and then all the other clothes I have to put on for the job.  Anyway, this foot problem is an ongoing thing and I expect it to be as long as I have to work and wear this “uniform.”

After burning my feet with a vinegar bath twice a day, I had to call that quits after three days.  I was intending to kill the athlete’s foot fungus.  Well it seemed to get a bit better, but it also burned the rest of my feet.  Being the determined person I am, I put up with soaking for thirty minutes each time.  After the third day, even my strong will power figured I was doing more harm than good so I went back to my green alcohol and medicated Gold Bond powder.

 Birdbath fun

Just inserting a few pics here to break up the text.  Believe me you don't want to see my feet. 

 

Then I decided to unwrap my poor patio plants and water them and let them get some air.  That led to cleaning up the whole patio and getting rid of leaves and dirt and all the stuff that drifted in over the winter.  Naturally, I was wearing flip-flops to do this entire job, which took a few hours.  That finished my feet off, not to mention my poor aching back.

 Blooms on our Bradford pear tree

 

Since then I’ve had the worst blister on my big toe.  And of course the athlete’s foot is still there too, but not as bad as it was.  It was finally time to go and see the doctor again.  Good grief!  Twice in three months.  I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come.

To make a long story short, I have two new prescriptions to pick up at the pharmacy tomorrow.  Tonight I start my Epsom salt bath for my feet that I have to do twice a day.  “Stop all the home remedies” the doctor said, but the Gold Bond powder is okay and I can continue to use my ointment for the athlete’s foot until I get my prescription. 

This stuff better get rid of these foot problems because I can’t wear my flip-flops until that blister is gone.  I’m crossing my fingers here.

 Raven wanting to play

 

On a cheerier note, I got my car fixed and it looks great. The weather has been fantastic.  I love the 80’s and having the windows open.  And the cats continue to amuse me every day with their antics.

 A beautiful sunrise on the first day of spring

 

I’m still attending the citizens’ police academy and learning so much.  The chief of police came to talk to us tonight and Saturday we get to go to the shooting range and watch a demonstration by the SWAT team.  I can’t wait for that.  More later.

Pickle juice is used for what?

Clip art

Yesterday at work we got into a discussion about minerals and cures for leg cramps.  Yes, sometimes we talk about the darndest things.

Rubbing pickle juice on leg cramps in the middle of the night came up.  Apparently, an older lady who works with us uses this on her Charlie horses that strike in the middle of the night.  In fact, she keeps a jar of pickle juice on her nightstand.  Who knew?

This information was confirmed by a second employee passing by and overhearing the conversation.  What a curious thing to learn.  I just had to google this when hubby told me about it.  According to the lady’s, this has to be dill pickle juice.

After getting on my computer today, I found that it’s the mix of salt, water and vinegar in the pickle juice that stops the cramps.  Supposedly you can drink a shot of this before bed, or rub it on the muscle that is cramping in the middle of the night, or at any other time.  The older lady, who keeps the pickle juice on her nightstand, says it can also be rubbed through clothes and will soak into your skin.  The clothes can be washed, so no worries there with the pickle juice. 

The internet says that rubbing mustard on the cramps will also help but I can see this being a lot messier and perhaps something that would stain your clothes, or the sheets.  I wouldn’t recommend amassing those mustard packets from fast food restaurants on your bedside table. 

I’ve alleviated most of my cramps though by adding a magnesium tablet to my nightly regimen, but I’ll try this pickle juice also because I’m on a low sodium diet and may not get enough salt on the nights the cramps wake me from a dead sleep.

So who knew relief was just as far away as your refrigerator?

Could this be a dry eye cure?

The jury is still out but just maybe this is going to work this time.  I don’t know how many of you out there suffer from dry eye, but if you do I’m hoping this will help you out.  I’ve been dealing with this for about four years now.  Trust me, it’ll drive you crazy.  It’s impossible to do anything without carrying around a wad of Kleenex in your pocket because my eyes drip all the time.  This is very annoying at work, or when I'm trying to get anything else done.  People ask me all day long why I’m crying.  Oh my!  I’m not crying at all.

I’ve talked to pharmacists and doctors and they all recommend OTC eye drops, which weren’t doing the job for me.  Finally I even got a prescription eye drop and that didn’t help either after I paid $45 for the tiniest bottle of eye drops you ever saw.  It would have been $95 except I talked to my insurance company and they mailed a form to the doctor to fill out and fax back so I could get the price lowered.  I was willing to try anything once, otherwise I wouldn’t have agreed to these even at the lower price.  By this point, I was desperate to find anything to help.

Surgery on my tear ducts is also an option but sometimes if they perform this procedure it can cause your corneas to crack later.  That’s even more problems, or the possibility of them.  I was about ready to gouge my eyes out, except being able to see is precious to me.

This is on the drugstore shelf

Then I went to the specialist that performed my cataract surgery.  He also told me to use OTC eye drops and see if they helped first.  I left there feeling very discouraged because I’d tried every OTC eye drop on the shelf, except for one he told me to try along with one I had already tried.  So, what the heck, I may as well see if this combo does any good.  I drove to the pharmacy and got the ones I needed.  This wasn’t cheap either, but at least they weren’t $45 a bottle.

I was instructed to use them and wait at least five minutes between each drop.  I wait ten in the morning when I first get up.  If I don’t take care of it then, it won’t happen because my day gets too busy.  I was super anxious to get rid of this dry eye problem.  So it takes about twenty or thirty extra minutes added to my morning routine, but I figure it’s worth it if this plague will go way.

So far after two months, it seems to be working.  If it still is six months from now I’ll say this does work and to grab some of this stuff if you or anyone you know has dry eye.  Maybe I’ve helped someone because this affliction is very annoying.  I'll update everyone later.

Is it Botox or something else?

From Web MD website

I swear guys; the last couple of weeks have been a total mess.  A week and a half ago I woke up a week ago Saturday with lips twice their size.  What’s going on?  Seriously, it looked like I had Botox injections.

At least I know what I’d look like now if I ever got them.  It’s so unnatural and I can’t drink out of a glass because I spill it on myself.  My lips are too big to feel the glass edge.

I had been dealing with mouth ulcers for the previous three days and this was an extension of that.  You know the kind you get from eating tomatoes and other foods that are too acidic.  I’ve gotten in the habit of washing all the seeds out of tomatoes because I love them so much, but I don’t always do it.  I guess this will teach me.

You have no idea the ordeal I’ve been through with this.  I never get half a dozen in my mouth at the same time.  I probably don’t need to tell you how painful this is.  So, I started out using some Kankar on them because I had that in the medicine cabinet.  That wasn’t doing it, so I got on my old friend Google and searched for a solution to this issue.

Everyone was shouting out praises for alum, yes the pickling spice.  So, I decided to give that a whirl last Sunday and Monday nights.  Now warning, this is not for the faint of heart.  This stuff burns enough to send you through the roof for a few minutes.  Hubby helped me apply it.  The instructions were to count to one hundred and then spit, but not rinse and then go to bed. 

The next morning, things weren’t improved at all so I had another dose on Monday night.  On Tuesday morning, my lips were stuck together, so I gently wiped them with a wet paper towel and then rinsed my mouth.  I felt like crap, but got ready for work, hoping no one would notice.  I stuck some moisturizer in my jeans pocket and used that all day because it felt like my lips would crack at any moment.  That day I also used campho phenique recommend by the pharmacist at Walgreens.  Hubby was a bit concerned at this point, went down there, and talked to him.  The pharmacist said it was the best over the counter medicine for ulcers in the mouth. 

Does anyone remember this stuff?  We used it on mosquito bites as kids.

I had Wednesday off, so I decided to go to the doctor and have this mouth situation checked out.  I’m not one to run to the doctor for every little thing, but I was sick of fighting this.  I really wanted it gone by Thanksgiving.  I was down to eating bland mashed potatoes and scrambled eggs.  Those eggs reminded me how much I hate plain scrambled eggs, but almost everything burns my mouth.

My regular MD is on vacation until December 1, so I had to see the on-call doctor at the office.  He told me I had a virus going on that I most likely got from a water fountain.  Excuse me.  What?  I don’t drink from water fountains and certainly not with my lips right on them.  To make a long story short, he gave me an anti-viral pill and “magic mouthwash.” 

The next two days I had to spend talking all day at work, so that hasn’t helped things at all.  I also can’t just take off to doctor my mouth when I want to.  I did take my prescriptions to work and used the “magic mouthwash” on my breaks, applying it with a Q-tip.  This mouthwash deadens your whole mouth for a while.

Now on Sunday night as I’m writing this, my mouth is better.  I’m almost out of my anti-viral medication but the ulcers are still there (the swelling is gone.)  So, it’s back to the doctor in the morning before my shift at work to see if I can get a refill or if he’ll give me something else.  At this point, I figure what is still left in there will get worse because I have to talk at work for the next three days and then Thanksgiving is a holiday, so best to take care of this now.

I’ll be seeing a different on-call doctor this time because I couldn’t get an appointment, so I have to go in, wait until they call me, and hope it’s before I have to leave for work.

Hopefully, I won’t be having scrambled eggs for Thanksgiving.

Has anyone else out there had this situation?

X is for Xamined by Dr. Mamaw

That’s right.  My Daddy’s mother thought she had the perfect remedy for everything that came along.  She would mix up concoctions for us to drink or rub on all of our “ouchies.”  This didn’t seem to hurt any of us.  Whether it cured us of what ailed us, I can’t say.  We always got better, but it may have been a case of the ailment running its course.

She would mix up lemon juice with honey and a shot of whiskey for sore throats.  Maybe or was the whiskey that made us forget about our sore throat.  We’d go to bed and be much better in the morning.

The only pic I have of Daddy's mother

We used Vicks a lot.  We rubbed it on our chest when we had a cold and we’d even put a dab on our tongue and swallow it.  I don’t think people do things like that today.  In fact, I’m sure there must be a warning on the label not to ingest it.

When we had a bellyache, they instructed us to lie on the floor with our butt against the wall and our legs extended up the wall.  We had to lie there for about twenty minutes.  It usually fixed us right up.

We rarely went to the doctor for anything because we didn’t have the money.  They fixed most things on the farm with old-fashioned remedies.  The only time I can remember any of us having to go to the hospital for incidents was with one of my sisters.  Bonni was always getting into a mishap.  She had to have her stomach pumped once for eating some old medicine out of the garbage and another time when she cracked her head open.  Mama tried to stop the bleeding with vinegar and water, but that didn’t work because the gash was a big one, so they took her to get it sewed up.  However, it did stop by the time the doctor was ready to work on it.  I guess my sister remembered her first trip to the emergency room and her sheer fright stopped it.

Did you have any childhood mishaps or have to suffer through childhood remedies?

Childhood Memories

I was going to post something different here today, but that can wait until next time.  I’ve been reading many of the posts by the bloggers I found on Linked In and they bring back so many childhood memories, so I thought that maybe a post on some of the wonderful, yet crazy, memories I have would be in order.  Of course I know all of us have led different lives and have lived different childhoods.

I grew up on a farm and I don’t know how many of you grew up living a farm life.  In my case that meant we were barely scraping by most of the time, especially when my parents had seven kids to worry about.  Some years it was hard to survive on a cotton farmer’s income.

We rarely, if ever, went to the doctor for anything, so if we had a mishap it was dealt with on the farm.  Between my parents and grandparents there was no end to home remedies and solutions for any trouble we might get into.

On this same farm lived my only uncle, my daddy’s brother, and his family of six kids.  All of us were subject to home remedies at one time or another.  Aside from all the bruises, cuts and scrapes and other more gory issues of breaking our heads open from some fantastic feat we were trying to accomplish, such as playing Tarzan and swinging from the trees on a ribbon, and other such things, when we had a stomach ache one of the “sure fire” remedies for getting rid of it was to lie next to a wall in the house, on our back, with our feet extended up the wall.  Now, I’m not sure if this really was a cure, or something just to take our mind off of our stomach ache, but it seemed to work every time.  In fact, my sisters and I still occasionally do this today.

There were mostly girls in our family and mostly boys in my uncle’s family.  We would get together in the summers to play baseball in the cow pasture.  There were thirteen of us in all, so not a bad number and enough players to make two teams.  Of course living on a farm, you have to be very inventive and creative with your games.  We usually didn’t have all the necessary equipment needed, so we used dried cow pies as bases.  Now, you can imagine what the baseball games were like and what shape we were in at the end of a hot, humid day in the Texas heat.  However, we always had the greatest fun while doing this.

All of us loved wading in the ditches too after a thunderstorm, which drove mama up the wall.  That muddy water sure did feel good though and was such a nice break from the heat.  We didn’t have A/C, or forced air heat in those days, so we strictly relied on the old box fans to provide some kind of air circulation and one Dearborn heater we would all crowd around in the winter time.  The only trouble with that, aside from fighting for a place among seven kids, was burning your front side and freezing your back side, or vice versa.

Another highlight for us girls was summer girl scout camp.  As brownies we were too young to go to camp, but once we became girl scouts we had weekend trips in the summers where we could work on our merit badges, as well as get out to areas of the country we had never seen.  We seldom left the farm except to attend school.

Once at the campsite, the first order of business was pitching our tents.  We always had old stuff that had been used for years and years in our family because we couldn’t afford anything new, so I always used my daddy’s old army cot to sleep on.  That was solid wood and quite an ordeal for a youngster to pack in down the trail to the campsite.  But, hey, I was excited to get off the farm and away from my siblings for awhile.  I always looked forward to the great adventure I was going to embark on.

Once the tent project was managed, we had to dig the latrine that would serve the purpose for all our personal needs during the weekend.

After that came the keyhole fireplace.  This was where we would cook all of our meals.  Does anyone remember coffee can stew?  Or did they only have that in Texas?  Before the trip we had to get prepared, so we all needed a small coffee can and ingredients to go in it that we would bring with us from home.  An old metal coffee can was saved for this purpose.  I don’t even think they make them anymore because I haven’t seen one in years.  This can was shorter than most coffee cans you see today and had a key to open it on the outside by the rim, near the top of the can.  We had to cut up carrots and potatoes and things and place them in this can.

This concoction would be prepared on a table we made by tying broomsticks together.  We each had to contribute to this by collecting broom handles throughout the year.  Once this table was assembled, we would take turns cutting up carrots and potatoes and onions and then put in whatever meat we had with us.  This mixture was put into the can, carefully replacing the lid so as not to cut ourselves on the sharp edges before wrapping the whole works in tinfoil to keep it together.  These little packages would be placed on the coals in the long portion of the keyhole fire pit.  I can honestly say that this was the best stew I’ve ever had.  Maybe that was due to the fact it was cooked outside in a coffee can, or maybe I was just starved from all the physical activity.

Other days of the trip we would have sandwiches, or try our luck catching fish at a nearby creek.

Of course there was lots of hiking and exploring too because these escapades always took place in some wooded area.  Along with this, we had archery events and other activities we would compete in.  And, as mentioned earlier, we could work on any merit badges that we lacked and that applied to this camping trip.

We all had our duties assigned to us by the scout leader, so we each knew what our job was and everything around camp ran smoothly.

At the end of the day we were all so tuckered out from all the activity that we were asleep before our heads hit the pillow.  I really doubt if we would have known if we’d been bitten by any mosquitoes until morning, but of course that’s what the mosquito nets were for.  The mosquitoes run rampant in south Texas in the summers and they are some mighty big suckers.  The only ones bigger I’ve ever seen was when I lived in Alaska, as an adult, but that’s a different story for another time.

As good as it was to leave the confines of home on the cotton farm; it was mighty good to get back too.