Taking Care of Sickness

Not to be forgotten.

When I returned from Barcelona, I was ridden with a cold/flu/rainy weather sickness and the drugs that I bought at the socialist pharmacy proved entirely useless. So, in that sense, returning the the tender, warm, loving care of Elvira was something I looked forward Monday night. When I turned the key and pushed the old oak door open, the pint-sized Elvira welcomed me not with open arms nor with a crooked smile, but with the sniffles and hacking instead. We were all sick Rafa included, all taking drugs, all not getting better. Elvira's pervasive cough seemed particularly threatening come meal time. Hovering over my food and letting rip a few good flemmy groans never sounded more appetizing. Some how, I got better without the help of the or much sleep.

The few days that I was sick proved particularly interesting in that a cultural exchange of sorts was able to take as we all started trading various do-it-yourself wellness remedies. My favorite from home has to be the salt water gargle. When I told Elvira that she should try it, she gave me a look of blatant sceptism directed both at the suggested and my mental well being. Obviously, she never tried it. She simply smiled and nodded with looks of 'how many more months do I have with this loon' every time that I suggested it thereafter. I must mention that it has been 2 weeks and her sickness is still has a rather strong hold on her. One positive thing from my initial suggestion - I learned how to say gargle in Spanish. It was a little difficult to say gargle with salt water, simply because I lacked the rather pivotal word - gargle. I began by saying 'you should (imitation of gargle) with salt water. In Spanish this roughly translates into, Debes (imitación de gárgara) con agua y sal. When that didn't work quite as well as planned, I tried translating gargle into Spanglish. (Thank you Latin-based languages.) I began with garguar, which really is a fairly good guess, unfortunate it didn't. Eventually between my imitating and spanglizing charade, she caught. Laughing, she said hacer gárgaras. How simple. I should have known it would have been something so literal. Hacer - to do/make. Gárgaras - gargles. To make gargles. Wow.

There was one other moment of relative educational productivity upon my arrival into the house of illness. I got to learn a Spanish sickness remedy. Warm milk with honey. You should try it when you have a cough, stuffy nose or sore throat. You should also try it if you like milk and honey. It's pretty surprising, although again I don't think it really did much to abate my sickness.