My Body is Wiser Than I am.

Blessings Darlings!

So, yeah, as previously blogged, I had a cold. Of course, the symptoms sucked - my throat was sore, I was tired, I had serious nasal congestion, my sinus' threatened to close, I was blowing my nose ALL THE DAMN TIME, etc.  I REALLY wanted to get rid of all the symptoms.

HOWEVER - most of the symptoms (not all of them) were caused not by the virus, but were part of my body's strategy and tactics for fighting off the virus.  I was tired because my body was putting energy into cranking out white blood cells/antibodies specifically targeting the virus.  The congestion, and the mucus, was because my body made the mucus membranes 'leaky' so it could get the antibodies to the virus infested areas easily.  If I had had a fever - that would have been because antibodies aimed at some virus'/bacteria raise the body temperature, too, because those 'bugs' are temperature sensitive.  The sneezing ... okay, that was probably the virus taking advantage of nasal structure to send itself out to infect others.

It was hard for me to not take OTC meds aimed at quelling the symptoms and let my body do its thing.  Taking decongestants and/or antihistamines would have let me breath thru' my nose, etc.  However the impact on actually getting over the cold would mean that I'd actually HAVE the virus longer.

Instead, I relied on hot herbal teas to help flush debris from the war into my kidneys, napped, ate well (tho' I could not taste ANY damn thing), used saline nasal spray to help keep my sinus' open, etc.  My husband couldn't eat the canned chicken soup that I added garlic and hot sauce to - it was way too spicy for him.  I couldn't taste any spices in it.  Once I was less sick I used my returned energy to make a batch of home made chicken soup and he carefully and Virgo-ly supervised the seasoning of it.

It was HARD to honor my body over my hatred of the symptoms.  I had to - gasp - ADULT.  I had to differentiate between 'getting better' and 'feeling better'.  I had to very narrowly focus parts of my healing work - that herbal tea was given specific target of 'keeping the sinus' open' not 'reduce all inflammation'.

I'm back to my usual level of health now.  I had to miss the local Woman's March huddle so I couldn't infect anyone, but I won't infect anyone at work tonight.  Tomorrow I get back to full exercising (which I should have stopped doing earlier in the cold - I did NOT honor my body that way at first.)

Frondly, Fern