Googling for a miracle cure

 

The eldest has been sick for well over a month now. Not constantly sick, but she’ll get a run of three, four, five days of good health and then the cold returns, or a stomach bug, or a fever.

 

We go back and forth to the doctor. We get antibiotics.

 

Every person we meet has a story on their lips, of how the colds and flu this year are worse, are stranger somehow than in other years. Tales are told and retold of a friend’s cousin’s nearest neighbour’s aunt who had a cold for two months straight.

 

The asthmatic cough that the eldest used to have every winter for the first couple of years of her life makes an unwanted come back. We plod back to the doctor and the old inhalers are re-prescribed.

 

I feel a familiar tightness in my chest. That fear returning. The memories of all those long nights years ago, lying on the floor by her bed, listening to every raspy breath, longing, praying, pleading to something, anything to make sure she got well.

 

Children’s illnesses always seem to be at their worst at night time, when the doctors’ surgeries are closed and the darkness envelops everything.

 

 

Twice now the youngest has come down with croup. The first time I sang her to sleep she seemed fine, aside from a slightly sore throat, but hours later she woke to the darkness in a terrifying barking, wheezy, can’t breathe panic.

 

I don’t normally Google illnesses.

 

I’m not a hypochondriac and medical terms can make me feel a bit queasy - I don’t really want to know  about the insides. But when the kids come down with a bug and the doctor advises waiting it out I turn into a keyboard medical researcher.

 

On a normal day I’ve got no interest in home remedies but the helpless sensation of a sick kid makes me gullible, open to offers of a quick fix.

 

And so, for the last month, I’ve been asking the Internet whether sage tea cures a sore throat, the effectiveness of a salt water gargle, cures for the vomiting bug, and how to stop a cough.

 

I have my fingers crossed that soon I’ll be able to return to my usual searches; Oscar dresses, when will it warm up and chicken roasting times.

 

Daisy Wilson is a freelance writer who lives and works in West Cork. Mum to an almost-teenager and a toddler who is striding through the terrible twos with a glint in her eye, life is noisy, fun and covered in fingerprint marks.