I am sick.
As if it weren’t evident by my recent Tweets:
What can I say? I suffer in silence. Like a martyr.
The weekend of my sickness coincided with the weekend, Mr. B’s American friend was over. As a result, he got to bear witness to some of the craziest healthcare he’s probably ever seen in his life. Poor Friend. You did not deserve this.
On Saturday morning, I woke up with a fever of 500 degrees Kelvin, after hallucinating in a dream that somehow me and my parents had gone to the West Bank, but gotten rocks thrown at us because we had gone in a Palestinian area. But the rocks turned into frogs that talked to us. Some of the frogs had Moshe Sharrett’s face. That’s when I woke up and realized I needed Tylenol. Also, since my throat hurt, I needed emergency relief.
“Boil me some water and bring the baking soda,” I told Mr. B, no doubt startling Friend. What you do, is you put the baking soda in the boiling water and then you gargle with it. This is a time-tested Russian cure dating back to 1993, when my mom told me to use it for my first major cold in America. It beats cough drops, throat spray, and socialized healthcare.
Luckily, I didn’t need to go any further, because I started to feel better, but there was more that could have been done. If I felt my nose was getting clogged, I could have boiled a whole soup pot of water and then, precariously thrown a towel over my head and stood over the pot,creating a vacuum so that the vapor of the water reached me and breathed in for 5-10 minutes. If you have never seen a Russian woman standing over a pot of hot water, it is truly a sight to behold.
I attempted this procedure with Mr. B when he was sick in the fall, to continue the tradition of passing down into our own little family. “Be careful when you lean over, that you don’t put the towel on the stove, because you will burn yourself and die, defeating the purpose of making you better.”
If THAT didn’t work, I’d move on to banki. Banki (jars) is the worst. I believe in English, banki are known as fire cupping, which, right away makes it sound as bad as it is. Basically, what happens is illustrated below:
Also here:
That’s right. It’s supposed to clear up your cold somehow. And it does. But it is NOWHERE NEAR AS RELAXING AS IT LOOKS. Mainly because we didn’t have special cupping jars in the Soviet Union, and my mom and aunt used real jars on me when I was 4 or 5. Also there was animal fat involved. Anyway, banki are perhaps the most terrifying experience of my childhood and I hope never to God to come near those again. Unless we get government healthcare and I have to go before a death panel. Maybe then I’ll consider it.
So there you have it. The the trinity of Russian healthcare. I’m off to gargle now.
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
I haven’t thought of banki in years. Thank you for dredging up that terror for me.
I hope you feel better. Did you go out without a sweater and catch a chill?
I sat on a cold surface and as a result am now infertile.
My grandmother used to tell me this all the time …
My conscience now tells me this on a regular basis.
Gosh!
kosot – ru’ach (wind cups) , they’re called in Hebrew. Very good for arts’n'crafts. And of course you sat on a cold surface and got infertile. I got that too, when I was in the army. I actually thought I got some terminal disease, gave away all my cake to other persons in the room (mama made me honey cake and I just gave-it-away). I thought I was dying.
Also, try walking barefoot in the summer on parket floors. Big chance of losing whatever baby you are currently carrying in belly. It’s a sure sign.
I didn’t know the plague had spread as far as Israel! I can’t believe you gave away all your honey cake. That’s even worse than death.
My parents used to stick my head under the towel all the time – though they used to boil potato skins in the water and then I had to breathe the steam. One day, as this was perpetrated upon me, I came up from the pot coughing and choking and told my dad I can’t breathe. Of course, he shoved my head back in, but after a couple of more iterations of this, he decided to check it out for himself and realized I wasn’t just wimping out. Turns out that somehow the towel got stuck in the closet with mothballs and was thoroughly saturated with naphthalene. Needless to say the mixture of potato peel steam and naphthalene made it a bit hard for me to breathe.
BTW, you also can mention the lemon eating, the sticking your feet in near boiling water, the mustard plasters… I can keep going…
I apologize for your childhood and petition Lenin on both of our behalves.
OMG! My dad had the remnants of “banki” on his back when we came to visit (to San Francisco) last weekend. We’ve lived in this country for 30 years – you’d think he would have evolved by now!!
Good God! They’re still aliiiive. Also, I didn’t realize that Russians lived in warm, happy places such as San Fransisco or the state of California. Kudos to your family!
Gorchichniki is perhaps the most terrifying experience of my childhood … and one that I got to repeat over and over again because I was a very sickly child and would come down with a cold/sore throat/the flu at least once every two months. I also hid from the nurse who came to our house to give me shots for something I had (I don’t even remember what it was exactly) … I locked myself in the bathroom and wouldn’t come out until after the nurse left. As you can see, I survived even without the shots.
Also, tea with raspberry preserves and a cut-up lemon with a little bit of sugar clear up sore throats in a jiffy.
what, no gogle-mogle?
Gogl Mongol? No, actually I was never exposed to that as a child (things my mother did right: 1).
http://www.gogol-mogol.ru/
Too bad they’re only in Russia
. I could go for a cake or five right about now.
well, it’s not a cake, “kogel-mogel” (in polish)is less tempting, potential salmonella containing , mixture of raw egg yolk and lots of sugar. My grandma remedy for sore throat.
and btw, I love Your blog:)
Oh, it’s the same in Russian. Just the link that e-kvetcher provided is to a bakery in Moscow called gogol-mongol.
Thank you for loving my blog and not yet reading about my skepticism for Polish things, especially Polish juices called Hortex. http://blog.vickiboykis.com/2009/07/19/hortex/
I read all of Your posts, but graciously overlook this one, since it’s so typical Russian thing;)
and since You’re fellow Bollywood fan.
I am upset that this neglects the great Born-in-the-USSR shibboleth: smallpox vaccine scars just below the shoulder.