Pound Of Cure

The saying goes: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. But what happens when the cure isn't much better than the ailment?

Mrs. Nod, Nub, and I got a green cold that was particularly unpleasant. The girl Nodlings: Blynken, Nod-girl, and Nib are down with the flu. Poor Nib has pink eye to boot -- nasty stuff that. We're trying desperately hard to keep them all away from the baby, Dab.

The doctor offered us Tamiflu for the flu bug, but the side effects are supposedly pretty nasty, including nausea, dizziness, vomiting, and confusion/suicidal tendencies (mostly in Asians, don't ask me why). If the disease makes you feel sick, but the medicine makes you feel cruddy or worse -- is there a benefit here?

The doctor also said that Elderberry juice has been shown to have both anti-bacterial and anti-viral properties. That's available relatively inexpensively at Whole Foods with no known side effects.

The bookworm, Wynken, is currently unscathed by any of these maladies because he keeps away from the girls and doesn't have to wipe snotty toddler noses.

I'm thinking of just continuing to bunker down the Nod-ettes in the isolation ward with a bottle of Elderberry juice and a stack of movies as long as your arm until the plague passes.