die Erkältung

I'm well into week 3 of this damned cold & I'm totally fed up with it.

Week 1 was the worst sore throat I've had in 44 years, being unable to swallow without pain relief? I guess I should have realised at that point what I was in for!
Week 2 was the start of the snot & then the sinus pain.
Week 3 more snot & a hacking cough that makes me sound like a smoker.

I've lost count of the boxes of Kleenex I've gone through, finished one packet of vitamin C tablets and started the next, tried endless combinations of anadin/paracetamol/ibuprofen and I've discovered the hot toddy - the best thing to come out of this cold, in fact the ONLY good thing to come out of it!
I found a recipe online & Simon (bless him) volunteered to make one for me, then the following night he volunteered again & again...now, I'm not a whiskey drinker, but when mixed with hot water & honey & lemon - delicious!!

The Germans of course are full of helpful suggestions to combat a cold, some of which I've taken on board, some I've ignored:

• Grippostad, which turns out to be paracetamol & vitamin C together in a tablet, marketed for cold/flu relief - has about the same effect as plain old anadin/paracetamol/ibuprofen.
• vitamin C (this from the Apotheke - I wasn't impressed) I'm still taking it & if it's increased my ability to get better I dread to think how long this cold would have lasted without it.
• Gelomyrtol tablets which seem to work like eucalyptus oil from within, odd & I'm unsure as to the effectiveness of them, so much so that now my sinuses have stopped giving me such grief I've stopped taking them.
• Tea. I don't even bother to ask them which particular tea I ought to drink (the Germans do love their fruit & herbal tea) I'm English, I want tea from India that needs milk in it, I don't want some poxy pink stuff in a little bag that smells of raspberries! I've been drinking lots of tea (gotta keep the fluid levels up) but it probably isn't the kind they think I should be drinking!
• Ashes or was it oatmeal in my socks...as you can tell, I didn't pay much attention to that suggestion, I can think of SO many reasons why it wouldn't work (apart from the fact that my socks/shoes would be ruined)

So I'll stick with my hot toddy & various combinations of over the counter drugs, well, I say 'over the counter' but here in Germany to get any kind of 'drug' aka paracetamol/anadin etc you have to ask the lady in the Apotheke (chemist) & then she'll let you have 1 box...so unlike the supermarkets or chemists in England where you can buy almost as much as you want without having to beg for it (although there are limits to stop you from overdosing, but nothing to stop you from stockpiling with a view to overdosing...) consequently the drugs we have in the house are stockpiled on trips to England and brought back with us!

I refuse to go to the doctors of course (although most Germans I know whould have been there on day 1 whining about the sore throat) and there are several reasons for my refusal:

• you have to sit in a waiting room full of sick people - suppose I catch something else?
• it is, at the end of the day, only a cold, and there's nothing the doc can give me to cure me, I'm intelligent enough to self medicate. I know what the limits are.
• when I was a child I never went to the doctor, I had to be almost at death's door before a visit was organised, and I guess that kind of habit stuck - it's not that I don't trust them or anything, honest!

I haven't been out for a run for 3 weeks, I shall be so out of shape when I finally get out there again, I was toying with the idea of going tomorrow but I guess I should wait and see how the coughs going, maybe leave it till next week. It's gotta be gone by then surely?

I need shares in Kleenex!