Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Hot Toddy

Here's how I make my hot toddies:

Juice of 1 entire lemon
Equal amount strong booze (at least 40% abv) such as brandy, cognac, scotch, or bourbon
Almost that much honey
Top up with hot (NOT boiling! you'll evaporate the alkyhaul) water.
Drink.

There's enough acid and alcohol in that concoction to disinfect a front-line hospital. On Sunday night when I had a sore throat it worked a treat -- by Monday morn my throat was better. But at the same time my sinuses got worse.

Now, on here on Tuesday night, my sinuses are still plugged, my throat is hurting again, and it's moved south into my chest. That's the really worrying bit. I can race with a plugged nose (i breath through my mouth anyway) and i can cope with a sore throat, but chest congestion makes racing impossible. You just can't get enough oxygen in to power the muscles. I'm getting really worried. This is the same thing Sal had, and she was down with it for almost 2 weeks.

I've been to Henley twice before, and both times I've been fucked by my team. Once I was sabotaged by my coach (yes, I know that sounds paranoid, but I think he was getting me back for throwing up on him, unrepentantly, at training camp), and the second time all the senior women in the club quit and my only hope was in a coxed 4 (an inherently shit boat, as it has the worst power:weight ratio of any racing craft) with 3 keen but inexperienced and unfit novices. Then last year I lost the whole of the spring season to my back injury.

This was my year. This was the year for the glorious come-back. I got screwed by my club YET AGAIN (i'm not bitter, i swear), but managed to find a fantastic partner and get it together in a double scull.

AND NOW I'M SICK.

Honestly, there does not exist in this world an angstometer of sufficient capacity to measure my frustration.

So today I bought a coloring book to color. Like you do.

7 comments:

Gordie said...

I guess when you say "fucked" you don't mean that in a good way.

Geosomin said...

Drink the toddy...whenever the ansgt comes up, drink another...take the energy and use it to row the fastest time ever.
See if you can get an inhaler before the race - a steroid based one plus ventalin. I was given one to help me breathe when very sick (near pneumonia) and man- it made a world of difference...I could *breathe*.
Hope you feel better by then - there's still a few more days...lots of time for more toddies.

FirstNations said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
FirstNations said...

ok try that again.
Thats brilliant! an inhaler! I finally found one that works like magic too...seriously, this put ten years back on to my life expectancy; i feel that good. it's called ADVAIR over here; it has fluticasone propionate and salmetrol. the stuff makes a WORLD of difference, and not just for asthmatics either. they hand it out for allergies and other inflammation problems...so you count!
my son turned me on to it. it is SCARY effective. like, after three inhalations-literally a day and a half.
now go get faced and color in your colorbook. then hit up the nhs. threaten to color in THEIR colorbooks.

Annie said...

I always had you down as a tee-totaller

Moominmama said...

Gordie: yeah, there's good fucked and not-so-good fucked. I'll leave it up to you guys to decipher the difference from the context. If you can't tell which one I mean, feel free to assume the ambiguity is deliberate. (Us writer types, we like deliberate ambiguity. It makes us feel smart. Like using words like 'ambiguity'.)

re: inhaler. Not a bad idea. I'll ask the nice stethoscope-wearing people about that.

Annie: really? you're not being sarcastic, are you? You must be. Sorry, I'm not even good at picking up real life sarcasm. e-sarcasm is nigh on impossible for me.

ZB said...

Go and get Max Strength Lemsip. Ignore the dosage instructions. Take them regularly. At least two red hot baths a day (or better still, sauna/steamroom) to get the mucus flowing. Hoick it up. Vicks on your chest at night. You'll stink of wintergreen but it'll help clean it. Steam tunnels with your head over them. Blow the snot out. You have to overheat yourself to accelerate the virus lifespan and get to the stage where it's coming out. Once you can do that, you can row because you can spit and snot the rest out. Doesn't matter if you finish with snot on your top lip as long as you finish.

Now. Go and kill.