Luckily I don't get sick often and rarely is it enough to need a doctor, but there are a couple exceptions. The 2 biggies working with kids are pink eye and strep throat.
A couple years ago I got pink eye, went off to the doctors, and $150 later I was back home with a perscription. The perscription worked and I got better, no problem...except I was $150 dollars poorer. Not cool!
A year later I got pink eye again, this time I didn't want to part with another $150 so I started doing some searching online. I found a lot of home remedy ideas. Some of them, like rinsing your eye with lemon juice or honey and water, seemed just plain stupid. Maybe the really work but I wasn't keen on dropping citric acid into my eyes so I kept reading. I came across one that I felt confident couldn't hurt to try. Saline solution.
According to the website, using saline contact solution as eye drops will clear up pink eye. Since contact solution gets in your eyes all the time when you wear the contacts you've just rinsed with them, I decided it was a safe option. I started dropping saline solution in my eyes several times through the day and just as quickly as the antibiotics from doctor had done it, my pink eyes started to clear up. Within a few days it was totally gone. Awesome!!! One bottle of saline solution: around $6-10...an easy home remedy for pink eye...priceless! :)
I was thrilled! But what about other home remedy ideas? The next time it crossed my mind was during a visit to Canada when I got a UTI - miserable! I'd had one before after a kidney stone (even MORE miserable!) so I knew what it was. I was in Canada and not sure how to even go about seeing a doctor and getting a perscription in a foreign country, let alone how much it would cost me! UGH! So I turned back to the internet...Once again I found lots of suggestions and a lot of them seemed perfectly easy. The two I decided to give a try....drink lots of cranberry juice and water mixed with baking soda. Phil ran out and got me a giant container of cranberry juice and I started mixing glasses of baking soda and water.
I drank and drank and drank and again, within a few days I was back to normal. Yay! I was becoming a BIG fan of home remedies!
My most recent illness...the dreaded strep throat, courtesy of the little girl I nanny. I did a search online but didn't find much. Most things I read said that there were the potential for a lot of complications and worse things to come if left untreated....hmm, didn't sound like something I should risk on home remedies, especially as what was being suggested didn't sound like anything more than preventative stuff or pain control. So I went to the doctor...$150 more...gross. But I got better and all was back to normal.
Until yesterday, when I woke up with a sore throat again. Not a big deal I figured because I get sore throats a lot in the fall and winter. But it didn't go away all day. My tonsils are swollen and my throat is red...no white yet and not as painful but ugh...what I'm getting strep again? My other nanny kiddos class had another case of strep this week so what if I've been exposed again? So totally uncool! And right before Thanksgiving and my trip to Canada...NO!
Since things were in early stages I decided to go back to online remedies and try to stop this in its tracks...Drinking tons of OJ, gargling salt water, taking echinaesea and zinc...all that jazz. But there was another couple suggestions I hadn't tried before. Yogurt apparently could help so I've had some of that, the other was to gargle with apple cider vinegar
Ewww, that sounds unpleasant. But it doesn't sound too hazardous either so I decided to try. BIG mistake!
Seriously, that was one of the worst things I ever tasted...I immediately started gagging and it took about 10 minutes of mouth rinsing and drinking juice to get the flavor to go away so I didn't feel like throwing up anymore. So SOOOO gross!
Maybe it would really work...but I can NOT handle it...too gross for me! So I'll just keep to the vitamin c, zinc and yogurt and hope for the best!
1 comment:
Okay I loved this post. I too have the same fear of medical bills, and I really should try to stick to home remedies before scurrying off to the doctor. Doesn't it make sense that people figured out how to use what nature has given us before antibiotics? You've given me a ray of hope.
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