Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Sickness and Medicines

I have been sick a lot this fall and just got over the flu or something. My recent illness made me think about how I would deal with health issues living at the cabin. Not that I am worried about getting to the hospital or anything like that, I have great neighbors, but what about healing and for that matter getting sick in the first place.

Would that fresh cool air of the San Luis Valley help with getting over the bug? Would a healthy diet lacking fast food and 7-11 snacks aid in the recovery? The cabin has a little box full of the basic health care needs; Imodium, Tylenol, ibuprofen, Benadril, couple of different cough syrups and a big bottle of multi vitamins. Occasionally a pharmacist is necessary for proper drugs, what is a good general antibiotic that's easily stocked? How do you get prescription medicines with out proper prescriptions?

Personally I feel that a shot of whiskey, a cup of chicken soup and a few hours laying in the sun is the best remedy for anything that afflicts you. If not cured then at least you are in a much better mood. Sometimes I take a handful of vitamins if it seems to be real bad.

I work in a very unhealthy environment. My office is in an old raised floor server room located in a windowless basement that I share with about eight other people. The office is cold, dark and has its own air handling unit designed for server rooms, it cools without adding fresh air from outside. The job is tedious, depressing and if one of my co-workers gets sick invariably we all get sick. On the upside the work does not require a huge emotional investment and pays really well until I can move to the cabin full time.

The holiday season also forces us into revoltingly social situations surrounded by people coughing, sneezing and oozing various mucal substances. They all want to touch you and being somewhat introverted this can be quite stressful. Don't get me wrong I am not an isolationist I just want to be more selective with my company.

So, will being removed from this squalid mass of disease reduce the frequency of illness? Will living in the relative stress free alpine freshness of the San Luis Valley benefit my health? I am planning to move to the cabin in late May of 2008 let's hope I make it till then.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would add some green tea and honey
and oatmeal for breakfast.

If you could get some of those rainbows out of Mt. Home reservoir that too would be a plus .

Leland Dirks said...

All I can say is that I haven't had a single cold or bout with the flu since moving down here... part of it is the limited number of people I actually see on a regular basis (limited vectors for the nasty viruses to follow to me), and part of it is way less stress... Honey is good advice, and generally a very healthful product... Next year (or maybe more realistically, the year after that), I want to try my hand at raising bees to have fresh honey... By the way, your gardening has inspired me to plant broccoli, spinach, swiss chard, lettuce, and peas in the house. I get great sun, so I am hopeful I'll have at least the leaf vegetables to enjoy this winter....

BigBear said...

Thanks Future Farmer,

I will add some green tea and a few jars of honey. There is already a big bucket full of oatmeal. I love oatmeal for breakfast.

BigBear said...

Hermit,

I was thinking about bees the other day and if it would be difficult to harvest honey.

Something else I noticed a couple of summers back was the water. I usually bring drinking water from home but filled my jugs at the public well between Blanca and Alamosa. I drank that for a couple of weeks and it made a huge difference in how I felt. I think the chemicals in city water supplies are not nearly as good for you as they let on.

My broccoli is doing good having some trouble with the tomatoes and bush beans but the broccoli is coming along nicely.

Wyoming high ground said...

Have you investigated colloidal silver? I have used it for 15 years at onset of symptoms and have never lost a day to illness. It is noo magic bullet, but it works for any communicable bacteria, virus or fungus.