Covid-19 in the community

My sister brought SATs machine, I had blood pressure machine, I got a temperature machine, I had cough mixtures, paracetamol, I had the West Indian ointments, the Himalayan salt, my relative in Atlanta phoned me and told me what to do to drink, to boil mint with ginger, orange juice and garlic and drink that. You name it, I had it.

Oh yes. I have so many, actually had to, I literally turn off my phone and decide no I’m not going to allow people to invade me and people actually calling you, “Have you tried what I give to you?” you know you feel, well there came a time where I had to say to them, “oh right listen I’m sorry but I didn’t try that, and I will not try it. This is the reason why I’m not trying it” [laughs]. You know, because everybody’s like, “No but that one is not right, this one works. This, my grandmother, or my grand…” oh my god it was just going on and on and on.

I remember it because obviously as soon as you fever you just take paracetamol. So that’s the thing we’ve been doing since childhood, right? Fever, headache, you just use paracetamol, and it just, you know, gets you down.

And that was when my aunt used to, when my aunt phoned she said “Get somebody to get you some bay rum, it’s a bottle thing West Indian thing and use it,” she said, “and wet yourself rub yourself all over to cool yourself down.” And that didn’t, she said “if you haven’t got any bay rum, get some West Indian rum, put it in your hands, and wash your whole body with it to cool yourself down. Those were the stuff I was told to use.

To be honest, my character, my personality, I don’t rely on medicine and, even when I’m very, very ill, I still believe that our body, my body can fight, you know. So normally, I only take some paracetamol when I, if I really headaches but I try to do this, I try to use my own body to fight first until I’m really bad and then I will take some Panadol or sometimes if I’m coughing really bad, then I take some medicine for me, to allow me to just allow to sleep, you know. Just that normally, I don’t like to take medicine.

Anyway I also have a good network of complementary health practitioners so I got in touch with an acupuncturist I know, he gave me some advice and so I did all of these kind of immune health boosting, like seven days having things with zinc, vitamin C.

I was just upping my Vitamin D. Lots and lots of home remedies, lots of herbal teas that my sisters had like gifted me, obviously turmeric and then manuka honey and all of the goodness. I was just upping that. And honestly, I think I completely OD’d on Vitamin D [laughs]. My sisters were like, we’re short you know. Even the doctor said, “It’s fine.” You’d rather have more than less.

You can’t, you can’t wish away illnesses away through vitamins and things like that. You just can’t, I don’t believe you can but at the time I believe that we have to have more holistic approach to medicine so I’m someone who’s always gone down the route of taking conventional medicine, also looking at other options as well, so, for example, acupuncture you know, some herbal medication. Supplementary things you can take to boost, you know, your immune system and things like that but that won’t, I don’t believe won’t make up for anything if you’re not also looking at conventional medicine as well and I believe in that very strongly.

And so for like in my home country they use a lot of plant based, you know, natural remedies and some doctors use that as well, you know kind of natural medicine, so like garlic, lime… ginger. That also, that’s also helpful like for your lung and for your, just to protect you against the virus itself as well to help you with the things.

There is ginger in it, there is lemon, there is there is onions, red onions, red onions, you know. And then you boil it with water. And then the water that comes from this after it’s been boiled, you drink it, you know. And then when you drink it says it wash the lungs, you know, it washed everything. And then you can try, you can better yourself, basically. It betters your immune systems, you know. So, you know, that what it does, you know? And people have been using that, and when they say drink a lot of liquid when you have Covid, you know, they say that those are the things that you supposed to drink, rather than drinking only water hot water or water or water. It’s better to drink things which have onions and lemon and ginger in it.

A friend also had it in the early part of y'know, Covid, made me this concoction, which was awful. It had lemon, lime, black pepper, turmeric, ginger in it. But I took it because I think she’d taken it and it helped her. You know, no doctor is gonna see me. You’re kind of left to get on with it. I had to do something and so I, I did, I did take that concoction and my son was very good. He looked after me, but also made sure that I took the concoction and that I was drinking water and so on.

So you’re boiling the ginger, you’re boiling the garlic, you’re doing everything some people come up with some strange, strange mixtures, you know, and I just had to look, decide forget all those things please because they’re not working, and no matter how much ginger I took my throat was still the same way, you know, and just stick with trying to allow my body to fight it.

Many people mentioned garlic and this, I don’t even know what to call it, a concoction, where you mix garlic and turmeric and blend it until it gets, because I said it’s not recommended by the doctor, so I’m not taking it.

Yeah. So, everyone was advising take this that. The doctors themselves just said take painkillers to ease your temperature and stuff. But I think what worked for me was the steam. I used to do a lot of steam. That worked for me. That controlled my temperature, helped me a lot. But there wasn’t actually any medication. Vitamins, I used to take vitamins and then just hot drinks and steam and rest. I think the main thing was rest.

And sometime put some hot water and some lemon and, you know, the, what’s it called, some medicine I forgot the name, one drop, you put it in the hot water and take the bath, it makes you like clear the congestion from your throat or something like this, clear and help you to breathe clearly because your nose, mucus maybe block so you can’t breathe properly and that bathe in hot water and this clears your nose and everything. It’s a bit like a tough time because things are hot, you know, the steam, you can’t put your head down too many, too long time but it’s still we had to go for it for better future. We work hard for this and this is maybe why we are okay now.

This idea came in my mind, to improve the breathing, just take the steam. So when I started start taking that I see that small difference, small light and that gave me the hope, yes, this can improve me. So again, I started taking a lot like, you know, three, four, five times a day. It’s like that, so whenever I do that, I can see that I am getting better, I’m getting better, I’m getting better. So then slowly, slowly like it was at twenty, thirty percent it didn’t go up and then gradually, it came down, slowly, slowly. But then, at one time, I woke up and it’s gone. I say, yeah, that’s good. I’m so happy that there’s no breathing difficulty, yeah.