Sicknesses and Remedies

On Friday morning, the seventh morning after Phil fell sick, he woke up and said, "I feel infinitely better!" Apparently, his sinuses had drained overnight, which woke him regularly, but also, finally, helped him feel restored.

Joe, on the other hand, had what appeared to be a fever. Homeopathic Aconite, commonly used for colds, hadn't helped him earlier in the week. This day, he took a dose and would sleep for several hours (despite three brothers playing on the bed all around him—since the bed takes up the whole floor in our only bedroom, that makes sense). By the afternoon, Joe was better.

Only to have Isaiah and Abraham complain of ear aches by nightfall! I pressed some garlic into olive oil, added a few drops of grapefruit seed extract, and dropped it in. They weren't huge fans of drops in the ears, but they woke ear ache free. Garlic is good stuff!

(Parenthetically, I think it interesting that antibiotics are generally prescribed for ear infections. For the first time in his life, Abraham has been on antibiotics this week. He also got his first ear ache.)

Phil took Abraham to get his stitches out around midday. After the first one came out, Abraham started to cry. Too much swelling yet, so they'll go back on Monday.

In the afternoon, Phil headed to the lower pasture to sawmill, a sure sign that he had recovered his vitality. The one huge log he finished, though, almost gave him a hernia. He said that, though he managed to get the log up on the sawmill just fine, the actual boards he cut, those same 2"x12"x15' that he did a week ago, were almost too heavy for him to lift. He did say that the wood appeared darker. Was the heartwood more dense? Did he really lose so much muscle mass in a week that what he could manhandle with little apparent effort now required such strength he could barely move it?

In any case, after a few hours and six boards, he was wiped out, and called it quits for the day.