What Were the Medications for Your Childhood When You Got Sick?
If there is one bright spot in illness, it is that even if you are the CEO or the Hulk, the vulnerable state of drowning in NyQuil and snotty rags often makes you think back to those who once cared for you. What did your mom, dad, grandmother Lulu, or other loved ones do as children to make you feel better? Make you chew on the raw garlic cloves? Shall I give you a mixture of raw egg, sugar and vodka? Letting you watch Star Wars for seven hours straight? Do you use any of these tools in your family today?
While San Francisco Chronicle writer Vanessa Hua was suffering from the flu, she remembered the medications of her childhood. She writes in her column :
If I coughed, my grandmother would give me a spoonful of Chinese medlar syrup, sticky and sweet, dark and heavy as midnight, like motor oil, which I washed down with a glass of water. For various aches and pains, she had a jar of tiger balm, an ointment for all diseases with the scent of camphor and menthol. We had nothing stronger than in the house, paracetamol or aspirin. We didn’t even have a thermometer — a paradox when you consider that my scientist mother has a laboratory full of brilliant equipment capable of making accurate measurements. To check if we were in a fever, she pressed her palm to our forehead and then to hers, comparing the difference in warmth.
I remember being sick as a kid and sipping cans and cans of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup and Chicken Stars while I watched Price Right. I coughed and sniffed when Bob Barker reminded me of neutering and neutering my pets. My grandmother came into the room every five minutes and asked me if I was cold.
Now I’m wondering what my daughter will remember as she gets older. Will she remember the times when I fed her popsicles filled with electrolyte and let her watch the “Let It Go” music video on repeat? Tell us: how did you receive treatment in childhood when you got sick?