★★★★★
In short: I was sick for nearly 3 weeks. Began when I was on a trip overseas, so it very well could have been the moist, stale air on the 9 hour plane ride. Started with a sore throat and feeling tired… developed into 2+ weeks of a low-grade fever, coughing up different colored gunk, lungs and throat rattling and wheezing, and feeling extremely exhausted. A relative who is a nurse listened to my lungs and said one had fluid in it.
Money kept me from going to the emergency room, called walk-in clinics but they told me they don't treat pneumonia, and there was a week-long wait for an appointment at my community health clinic. And so, I was on my own. I don't like to take medication EVER, but with this illness, I was scared and would have gladly taken any prescription someone handed me.
Luckily though, I didn't have the money or resources. So here is what I did:
The basics:
1) Rest – Slept as much as humanly possible and rested.
2) Fluids – Tons of fluids. Water, orange juice, tea, everything. Give your body a rest, don't bog it down with digesting things like meat.
The major players:
3) Raw garlic – Anywhere from 1-5 cloves per day. Rule of thumb: if you aren't getting results with garlic, take more. I pressed the clove to break it open and let the air hit it for 3-5 minutes. Then chewed minimally and swallowed with a teaspoon of honey. A little water to wash it down.
4) Oil of Oregano – I bought a small bottle of this at the health food store and tried all kinds of combinations (breathed in steam, put drops under my tongue, in my water, etc. ) Similar to garlic in helping fight bacteria and infection. (Also similar to garlic in that it tastes horrible and makes people think you've been cooking Italian food.)
Supplemental things:
5) Unrefined Coconut Oil – 1 Tablespoon once a day. Studies show that it cuts down recovery time for pneumonia in children.
6) Apple cider vinegar – Two Tablespoons heated mixed with a cup of water and honey. This helps with the cough. It calms down the throat and lungs.
7) Vitamin C tablets. Got these in another country but they are just like those fizzy vitamin tablets. Who knows if these really work, but I took them anyway. About 3000mg a day.
8) Even though garlic and Oil of Oregano don't kill of your body's defenses like an antibiotic would, I still added in some probiotic yogurt to help my body replace the good bacteria.
At the advice of my relative who is a nurse, I did also get a mucus thinner from the drug store as well… to get some of the fluid out of my lungs. Took two pills each morning for a few days but it caused me to violently cough, so I stopped taking it.
It took a couple of weeks, but I feel WORLDS better. Do these things taste and smell good? Nooo. Are some of your friends/family going to think the idea of fighting pneumonia with something like garlic is ridiculous? Yeees. But, it works. And I spent very VERY little money. My good sense told me garlic alone could fight this off, but like anyone, I tend to get scared when I am very sick (sometimes you just want an RX from a doctor.) Obviously, use your judgment and go to the E.R. If you must. But after this whopper of an illness, I'm telling you, I genuinely don't think I will ever take an antibiotic again.
