Honey for My Katie Bug's Cough

Honey

The Carletons have got the crud.  Katie was sick with an intestinal bug last Thursday through Sunday. I was sick Monday and Tuesday.  Will was sick (but wouldn't admit it) yesterday. It's a brand new day and I'm feeling better but now Katie's sick again.  Sheesh!  Hooray for back to school germs, right? 

I gave up and took the miserable child to the doctor. She's six.  All these years I've prided myself on my brilliant use of home remedies, never needing to take Katie to the doctor--ever--for anything other than a well child visit.  Well, other than the time when she was two and I let her climb along a four foot high wall at the playground and she of course lost her balance and came crashing down flat on her back and I rushed her to the ER worrying about paralysis when in fact she was just fine and the worst thing about the experience was sitting in the ER for four hours trying to get my toilet-training-resistant child to pee in a cup so they could test her urine to make sure she didn't have any internal bleeding.  Why do doctors always want their patients to pee in a cup?   Running to the bathroom every five minutes?  Pee in a cup.  Think you might be pregnant?  Pee in a cup.  Fall off a wall?  Pee in a cup.

After plying her with juice box after juice box and waiting waiting waiting, the nurse finally ditched the cup and convinced Katie to pee in a hat.  At least that's what she called it.  It's this giant contraption that fits inside a toilet that collects urine from disagreeable children who want to run home and brag to their cousins that they got to pee in a hat.

Fast-forward to this morning, driving to the doctor, and I'm bracing for the inevitable urine request, relieved that after four years my kid can finally pee on demand.  So of course when we arrived they didn't ask for a urine sample.  Instead, the lab tech gagged Katie with a giant Q-Tip and pricked her finger to check her blood for signs of infection.    

The results?  Her tonsils are very swollen but it's not strep. She has a deep cough but it's not pneumonia. Looks like our Katie bug has caught the common cold.  

Guess what the good doctor recommends? Rest, fluids, and honey. Yes, that's right. Plain ole honey for her cough. Did you guys know about this amazing remedy? Conventional medical doctor advocating homeopathic medicine FTW!

Who knew bee vomit has such healing properties?  Evidently everyone but me, including my favorite medicine man, Dr. Andrew Weil.  Here I think I'm so knowledgeable about alternative medicine and I didn't know about this one simple folk remedy.  

Next time my kid's sick, instead of avoiding the doctor thinking my Queen bee-like maternal wisdom is better than some worker bee doctor's conventional medicine, I'll remember that other people, dare I call them experts, sometimes have good ideas too.  Not only does it take a village, it takes a colony of bulimic worker bees to raise a child.