Thar Shaddin

Okay people, here's your chance to earn 100 cool points. This is an unprecedented amount of cool points on offer, so I hope you get your thinking caps on.

I need a home remedy (or meds other than mucinex, ibuprofen, nyquil because at this point I feel like I've taken enough of those with minimal results) for a nasty ass cold. Tomorrow night will mark one week since I started out with sore throat, white spots in throat and fever. I do not have results back on the culture (rapid strep test came out negative) but I am pretty sure it is not strep. The fever went away and it progressed into post nasal drip, more sore throat, and lots of coughing. Then the sore throat migrated into the base of my ear. I really do not want to go back to the doctor but the pain is starting to get extreme and after trying a ridiculous number of ridiculous things on google search I am hoping you lot will have better suggestions.

Still coughing (sometimes productive, most often dry), white spots are gone and replaced by red bumps on back of tongue and throat (presumably from all the coughing), congestion, sometimes wheezing after coughing, bad pain on swallow in base of ear/right side of throat. Due to pain and coughing getting worse when I lay down, I am not getting much if any sleep. FIX ME.

Mike from Australia will be here Thursday night. I really do not want to still be sick when we're trying to take him places and go camping and shit. I am getting a little desperate. I would really rather prefer not to spend more money at the doctor just to have him say 'yeah this is a viral thing not much we can do sorry! plenty of liquids!' because if I drink more than 4 liters a day I swear I am going to puke.

Sorry Kat. That sounds miserable.

I'm afraid when cold season hits here, we don't have any secrets beyond the usual water and vitamin c. A friend of mine swears by drinking a shot of whiskey or two to clear throat infections, and that makes sense since a strong alchol will kill stuff... but too much alcohol will dilate your blood vessels which can allow germs to travel around more (or so I'm told) and probably depresses your immune system.

Have you tried lots of water and rest?

I usually just drink something hot with a lot of ginger in it and subsist off of a variety of spicy foods for a week. Remember that the common cold is your body's immune system basically overreacting to a new strain of virus. The best thing to do is often to treat the symptoms and let the immune response run its course, but it just depends.

Personally, I just watch Labyrinth and drink spicy soup.