Laura’s Prepping Diary- 10/12/2011

I feel so out-of-touch!  Please forgive me for my tardiness in replying to comments and for not getting over to many of your blogs lately.

The pinkeye/cold epidemic went on and on.  I got it too, of course.  Joe was gone several days throughout the plague so he managed to escape it, and then I made a rare trip out of town.  Intermittently, my computer has been misbehaving also, sometimes when Joe was not home to fix it.

I said I’d let you know how the cayenne remedy worked.  I’ll say, it was interesting.

My test was not very scientific since I only used it on myself and already had such bad allergy stuff going on, so keep that in mind.

I got it during the night Thursday to Friday.  Friday morning I began the cayenne drops.  I think I used them a total of about 6 times before bed that day.

Each time I used them, my eyes stung a bit extra for 2- 3 seconds and then felt much better.  They watered a little, probably flushing some of the offending germs out each time.  When the aching, raw feeling returned a few hours later, I used them again.

Friday night, I got up 3 times before sunrise and stumbled blindly to the bathroom to unseal my eyes.  Saturday morning they looked much worse than the day before.  I continued to use the drops all day.

Saturday night my eyes still sealed up some, but not as badly.  On Sunday, I was clearly on the mend.  Monday, I think I was officially over it.

Like I said, this isn’t scientific, but comparing my experience to the rest of the family, it seems like my case was more intense, but shorter in duration.  Most of the others had goopy eyes for 2 extra days, but their eyes never looked as red or puffy as mine did.  I would expect that to mean that I was not contagious as long as they were either, which could be important in containing it.  (And of course, don’t touch your eyes and do wash your hands every 10 minutes or so.  Wipe down all those doorknobs).

If I got it again, I would also take extra zinc, some echinacea, extra C, and so on to help strengthen my immune response.

I will try to do some more research on alternative remedies to common ailments and maybe start a new series of those.

Sometime soon I will also tell you all about my trip.  My dear mother-in-law and I went to Jacksonville to attend a class on identifying wild edibles.  Bless Becky!  She really only went along initially because she loves me and because she wanted to learn to identify the other plants that break her out besides poison ivy, but I think she came away with a wealth of knowledge too.

We had a great time and GreenDeane Jordan (EatTheWeeds) is a fantastic guide and teacher.  I’ve been meaning to do a post on his fantastic YouTube videos and website for ages.  I will try to get to it soon!