Erica's Home Remedy Guide

I recently had a kidney stone, which was super fun and didn't make me feel old at all. I highly recommend it.
Here's a thing I wrote while on truckloads of narcotics.
You're welcome.

So you’re Feeling Like Crap?  Lucky you, I’ve felt like crap a million times, and can impart my anti-crap-feeling knowledge, tales of old wives, folk remedies, tribal voodoo, and medical expertise to you, through the medium of this helpful guide.

Step 1: Identify your Ailment

Spend at least two hours browsing WebMD.  Once you’ve got your sore throat identified as pancreatic cancer, you can safely go about not calling the doctor, knowing they would only laugh at you, and that you’ll have to wait till it’s progressed respectably to your lymph nodes.  Maybe they’ll make an ABC special about you.  Make out a will requesting your role be played by Natalie Portman.

Step 2: Hole Up

Find the coziest, funnest spot in the house.  In most homes this is the couch,- not as comfortable as the bed, but remedied by the proximity of the TV.  Arrange all your rainy-day hobbies around the couch; books, knitting, finger-nail-paring collections, whatever.  It really doesn’t matter, because you’re going to watch Judge Judy all day anyway. 

Around your Ring of Activities, you should place your Ring of Medication.  This must include: acetaminophen, ibuprofen, kaopectate, syrup of ipecac, Nyquil, Dayquil (or their store brand cousins Night Sleep and Day Drug) milk of magnesia, prune juice, Imodium, Mucinex, Vicks Vapo-Rub, and cough drops.  It doesn’t matter if you’ve only got a head cold, the Ring of Medication exists purely for psychological benefit.   Yours, and anyone who might come checking in on you, to see how you’re doing.

Finally, you arrange the Ring of Accoutrements.  This includes tissues, humidifiers, dehumidifiers, vomit buckets, warm washcloths, cold packs, hot water bottles, gatorade, popsicles, ginger ale, canned chicken noodle soup, bedsheets torn into strips, or any other home-remedies to which you are accustomed.

If you arrange these three Rings correctly, your living room will look like Howard Hughes had cloistered himself there for a fortnight.

Step 3: Veg Out

If you’re feeling kind of crummy, watch the Princess Bride.  If you’re running a low fever and can’t stop farting, also watch The Godfather, part one.  For a high fever and malaise, add The Godfather, part two.  Don’t watch part three unless you need a purgative.  

If you’ve got a sinus infection that you just can’t shake, watch all three Lord of the Rings, back to back.  Should you also be running a fever, spring for the extended versions, and feel free to watch the special features if your temp reaches 102 F.

If you’re passing a kidney stone at 2am, start a regimen of westerns until you finally break down and crawl to the emergency room.  I advise The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, then Fistfull of Dollars, and High Noon.  John Wayne should be avoided, though he is good for diarrhea.

When recovering from childbirth, or if you’re grossly pregnant in the heat of summer and the AC isn’t working and your grandpa just told you you ought to be out gardening in the sweltering August sun because his mother did it and you’re just not very tough and it doesn’t matter to him that this is the hottest summer on record because he keeps his house at 65 and doesn’t go outside anymore and he bets you’re going to get hopped up on all those drugs, too,- you wuss,- and it ain’t good for the baby and his mother did just fine without.  Then you watch Law and Order.  Start with episode one. Once you’ve made it through the nineties, you are legally allowed to change the text message notification on your phone to the ‘dun dun’ sound.

If you wake up with a- oh my god is that a spider bite- holy mary it’s huge.  And it just keeps getting more swollen and red, until you’ve got a welt the size of a tangerine on your stomach, and you don’t know that you don’t have black widows and brown recluses living in your knee walls, which coincidentally the door to is right next to your side of the bed.  Then you switch to video games.  I recommend Diablo, Skyrim, or really anything with swords and dragons.  These games always have giant spiders that you can hack to pieces with overlarge, phallic swords; as you surely would have done if that coward had dared to bite you while you were awake.  

For bladder infections, try The Sims.  The constant padding off to the bathroom is the perfect break time for you and your fictitious family.  Also you can wreak unjust vengeance upon them for your pain, and deny them all toilet breaks.  When they break down weeping and wet themselves, try shouting “That’s how I feel, dickweed!” smugly at the television.

Step 4: Wait for Death’s Loving Embrace

As you’ll know from your hours on WebMD, it’s only a matter of time.  Be sure to leave a note on the fridge for your significant other, so when they return to find your bloated, rotting corpse leaking all over the carpet, they’ll know it was sudden-onset pancreatic cancer, and you were just Too Brave for an undignified death in the hospital.  Also they will feel very bad for laughing at you when you told them it was Serious.  Be sure to add that if Natalie Portman is unavailable, Anne Hathaway would work too.