30 June 2008: Ukrainian Folk Remedies

30 June 2008

By two days after my [un]eventful night out, the four o’clock chill, the cigarette smoke, and the ashes I inhaled overwhelmed my immune system. I came down with a pretty sore throat and a headache, really nothing some rest wouldn’t have taken care of. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of telling Irina that I had a sore throat. After admonishing me for not wearing enough clothes that night, she began administering her ancient Ukrainian folk remedies.

Medicine number one was chamomile tea. Definitely harmless, though I’ve never been a huge fan of chamomile. Medicine number two was some sort of herbal infusion that I was supposed to steep for half an hour. This produced a lime-green liquid that I was supposed to gargle and not swallow. Irina was very insistent that I not swallow it . . . It didn’t taste bad, more like a combination of all the more moderate spices you might have in your cupboards. I thought the two of these would do the trick, inasmuch as anything would do the trick more than just sleeping. I was woefully mistaken.

Folk remedy number three involved submerging my feet in steaming hot water until they turned red. Like lobsters. I didn’t know feet could turn that color, actually. And what boiling my feet did to fix my throat, I’m not sure. Maybe the steam from the water? If that’s the case, then I think it was a rather roundabout way of doing it . . .

I was then instructed to don thick socks immediately after concluding my foot bath. After I was safely tucked in bed, Irina came back with a tablespoon and a bottle of vodka. In Russia, vodka fixes everything. “It’s to kill the microbes,” I was told. After swigging down the tablespoon (which is a lot bigger than American tablespoons, I’ll have you know) I had no doubt that vodka could kill just about anything given the right amount. Thus was my first encounter with vodka, and I have to say I wasn’t too impressed. It was like NyQuil, without the cherry flavor.

I was on my way to sleep when Irina popped back in with a tea saucer of crushed garlic which she placed on the top shelf of the bookcase. “It’s to kill the microbes.” I’m not sure about microbes, but I guess it kept the vampires away.

One last time before I was allowed to go to sleep, Irina came back in again, this time to show me what amounted to something like a bed of nails. It was a rubber mat covered in sinister-looking spikes. She apologized that I wouldn’t be using that tonight, since she was also ill and needed it, but she had been using the vacuum-tube therapy all night and was sure to be better by tomorrow, so I should feel free to use it then. Then she toddled off. What, you might ask, is the vacuum-tube therapy? I’m assuming that’s what the mini rubber bell jars affixed to Irina’s chest like the apparatus of a science experiment gone wrong were for.