My ears have been plugged for 6 days now. It started as a head cold and moved in to my ears. I’m thinking about sticking a pencil in there if I don’t get some relief soon. I’ve been Googling for home remedies and the best I’ve come up with is “try swallowing a few times in a row or yawning.” Wow! What a great idea?! Yawning? I never would have thought of that.
It’s not that I’m looking for some magic pill. What I’m looking for, is well, magic. The kind of magic that grandma had. (Ok, not My Grandma) What I’m looking for is some old timey remedy. Aren’t we moms supposed to have an arsenal of those tricks in our bag?
My husbands’ Gram used to cure a sore throat with something he refers to as a “potato peelus”. I’m sure the name is wrong and his memory isn’t quite exact, but it entailed putting a potato in a pair of her underwear and tying that combo around the victim, I mean, patient’s neck. I suppose the thought was that the potato would leech the infection out through your neck, and the underwear, well something magic must happen when potatoes and polyester are in close contact. Whatever. Just ask Charley. It worked. He mentions it every time one of us gets a sore throat. It worked because
A) You were going to get better in the next 24 hours anyway (and the potato pellus was just a bonus?)
B) Some Psycho-somatic potato power.
C) She said it works. End of discussion.
That’s what us modern day moms are missing. Some of that magic factor. The pomp and circumstance and dare I say, which craft rolled in to one. We’ve got Tylenol or Motrin. Don’t get me wrong, they have saved me and a screaming baby more that once, and yet, no magic. I’ve done the chicken soup, cold wash cloth on the forehead, olive oil in the ear, but 9 times out of 10, if the kids are sick it’s the Pediatrician’s recommendation to give them a little Tylenol. If your son comes home with a black eye are you going to bust out a steak? Nope, Motrin.
Maybe it’s just me. I did grow up in an Alternative Medicine family. My dad was a chiropractor, back when it was still embarrassing to be the kid of a Chiropractor. But I’m still going to look for those magic remedies. I might even start inventing my own. Bruise on your knee? Rub it with a shiny quarter. Chicken Pox? You’ll need a carrot juice enema. Ear infection? stuff your ear canal with a little bread soaked in vinegar. Then my kids can say to their kids, “Your throat hurts? What you need is a good old fashion Potato Peelus.”
Ok. I’m off to stick some vinegar soaked bread in my ear canal. I’ll let you know if it’s works. And even if it doesn’t, my kids will remember it as one of Mom’s magical cures.
I am sorry that you are feeling yucky….
Heres one for you – have you tried the whole ear candle thing? I have friends that swear by it although I have never tried it.
http://www.ear-candles.net/
Hope you find some relief soon.
LOL Love the remedies you came up with…here’s some to try:
Home Remedies for Stuffy Nose
Inhale turmeric fumes, for this tie some turmeric in a clean cloth and light it. Boil some water and allow it to cool, now add ¼ teaspoon table salt to it. Put 2 to 3 drops of this solution in your both the nostrils before meals and going to bed. Mix natural apple cider vinegar and water in equal parts. Boil this solution in a pan, when the fumes rises lean over the pan and inhale the fumes. Prepare a solution using 4 drops of Lavender Essential Oil and Pine Essential Oil, 3 drops of Peppermint Essential Oil and 7 drops of Eucalyptus Essential Oil. Inhale vapors of this solution by putting it on a cotton ball or an aromatherapy diffuser.
or, you could try:
Common Cold treatment using Garlic
Garlic soup is an old remedy to reduce the severity of a cold, and should be taken once daily. The soup can be prepared by boiling three or four cloves of chopped garlic in a cup of water. Garlic contains antiseptic and antispasmodic properties, besides several other medicinal virtues. The oil contained in this vegetable helps to open up the respiratory passages. In soup form, it flushes out all toxins from the system and thus helps bring down fever. Five drops of garlic oil combined with a teaspoon of onion juice, and diluted in a cup of water, should be drunk two to three times a day. This has also been found to be very effective in the treatment of common cold.
now if you had blemishes, toe nail fungus or a boil, that I could give you a home remedy for, but a sore ear you are just way too common, get a funky illness will you. 😉
Hope you feel better soon
hold on. which craft??
ok, here’s my ear remedy – vitamin c and a shower soother!!!
xoxo
Being the other grandchild of Gram, let me clear a few things up. First, it is a potato peeltus, which, while toasting my frozen waffles this morning (a cure for warts, by the way) I realized that Gram was probably calling it a potato poultice, but with her accent and our kid ears, we heard otherwise (you think it wouldn’t have taken me 20 plus years to figure that one out!). Second, you wrap the potato in one of her tube tops, not underwear–the type of clothing it is wrapped in is half the cure, so make sure you get it right. And finally, the reason that it works is that the potato “sucks the poison out of you.” Duh!!
I spent at least a third of my childhood walking around with half a potato strapped to my body by my grandmother’s tube top, so I’m speaking with some authority here. Well I think my daughter has pink eye, so I gotta go pour some maple syrup in it.
JK you do not disappoint! This is exactly what I would have expected from you and I am cracking up. Alternative alschmernative…take some freaking sudafed already! If that doesn’t do it nothing will!
Jk you are a never ending supply of useful information! I know why the potato peelus worked…the victim was so scared that they would have to suffer through it again that they said it was cured!! Really who wants granny panties around their throat! LMAO
Well, dearies, being the daughter of said ” Gram” I think I can fill you all in the real potato poultice. It was not panties or tube tops… it had to be white cotton cloth and you shaved the potatoes with a peeler into the cloth and then put just a few drop of turpintine on the ” taters” you then wrapped the cloth a few turns and wrapped it aound your neck and secured it with a safety pin. It was off to dreamland and in the morning cloth would have turned black from sucking the pain from your neck and you were off to eat mud pies with the best of them. You know there were a lot of witches in our clan and you must’n mess with the witches. Aunt SuSu
Well, dearies, being the daughter of said ” Gram” I think I can fill you all in the real potato poultice. It was not panties or tube tops… it had to be white cotton cloth and you shaved the potatoes with a peeler into the cloth and then put just a few drop of turpintine on the ” taters” you then wrapped the cloth a few turns and wrapped it aound your neck and secured it with a safety pin. It was off to dreamland and in the morning cloth would have turned black from sucking the pain from your neck and you were off to eat mud pies with the best of them. You know there were a lot of witches in our clan and you must’n mess with the witches. Aunt SuSu