So I’m recovering from my wisdom teeth getting pulled.  For some reason I feel guilty, sitting around, basically just watching TV.  I know.  I’m recovering.  I’m healing.  I shouldn’t be pushing myself.  And so far at least I have done the dishes this morning.  And cut up some onion to make some onion and garlic soup.  (I figure the healing properties of the garlic should help me recover anyway, and mushy onion in broth is soft enough for me to eat.)  It’s my usual blend of beef broth, beef bullion cubes, organic vegetable broth, and onions.  Just also with garlic this time.  I wish I’d bought more french onion soup broth from the store.  That’d have been nice.  But beef is almost as good.

It’s funny.  I’m not even really eating solid foods yet and I’m still feeling guilty.  Well, okay, so my hun made some mac ‘n cheese last night, and that mostly went down well.  The noodles were soft enough and slippery enough to get past my wounded gums okay.  Though by the end it was perhaps pushing it a bit.  And I had some hawiian bread with strawberry cream cheese too.  That definitely was pushing it.  But my stomach needed something solid.  I have a weird stomach.  It gets angry if I don’t take care of it.

Anywho, so I’m still pretty much on the only-barely-solids diet.  Good goddess I want some pizza.  And a burger.  But I’m being good.  And I’m rinsing my mouth with salt water after meals to hopefully keep any food particles from settling in to my wounded gums.

But ye gods I’m bored.  I’m just sitting around, enjoying the highs and lows of my Vicodin and watching crappy TV.  And being hot and cold and hot and cold.  And then putting ice packs on my face and getting really darn cold.  Though today I’m supposed to start putting on hot packs instead of cold.  Except I’m sweating like a pig.  I’m freaking hot.  I am not putting on a heat pack until I feel cooler or else I’m going to melt.

So … yeah.  Such is my life.  At least so far the swelling isn’t nearly as bad as I thought it’d be.  And my hun has done her best to stay home with me and take care of me and help me feel better.  And I got a nice call from my Mom.  So in good energies and prayer alone I should be right as rain any day now.  Meanwhile, I’ll keep doing my own meditation energy work, taking care of myself, and weening myself off of the Vicodin as early as possible.

If I could just get one good night’s sleep without constant pain-induced nightmares and frequently waking up, I’d probably be better in no time.

Wisdom teeth suck.

I’m just glad that I’m an independent software/hardware contractor that works from home.  Otherwise I’d be chewing through sick days or worse, be tempted to push myself back to work before I’m well again.

I’ve been wallowing in a sinus headache for three days. My sinuses are packed. This is one mean flu. And I ask myself, WTF? Why is it with all of our technology, we don’t have any miracle wonder drug to cure this? Oh sure, I have medicine. I’ve been taking two different sinus flu remedies. And they do help clear out the old gunk that’s blocking me up. But they clear it out by producing more, thinned out, so that tomorrow that stuff is now the old stuff that’s clogging me up. And day after day I suffer more of the same. Each pill gives me at most temporary relief. I want a cure!

Well, I found my cure. I went back to the basics - boosting my immune system. Echinacea, goldenseal, vitamin c, garlic … you get the idea. Nature’s cures. And sure enough, I start getting better the same day I start up this new regimen. I should have thought of it sooner.

But you can’t patent natural remedies like that. So you don’t find them in the cold and flu isle of your drugstore. You’re lucky if you can even find things like echinacea in your drug store at all. For that you usually have to go to your ‘health food’ store, where they sell all sorts of wonderful things like this. It’s a haven of old wisdom, packed up for you in the convenience of modern living. You don’t have to make a nasty tea from it. You just pop a capsule and chug some water to get it down. Convenience.

It’s funny. So many of our ‘modern’ drugs are just extracted or synthesized versions of these ancient remedies. Done in ways you can patent. No no, it’s not willow bark. It’s Aspirin^TM. And so, so many of us live under the delusion that the FDA makes it all safe. While we wait for the next wonder drug to cure the common cold, completely ignoring the medicines that nature gave us. When will modern medicine realize that it doesn’t always have to reinvent the wheel?

Not all herbs are snake oil. Much of our modern medicine comes from the same source. And which do you think your body is more likely to recognize as food to digest and extract the value from: an extracted compacted rock-hard pill that barely differs from a pebble, or a crushed leaf stored in a gel cap? Sometimes it’s not about dosage quantity but about the quantity that your body can actually break up and absorb. There’s no good reason why modern medicine can’t combine the old with the new to create the most effective cure.

But until they do, if we want it, we have to find it ourselves. Or at least find the people who are wise enough to become experts for us. Sure, herbs won’t cure everything. But apparently, neither will modern medicine.