Got Milk?
Saturday morning I woke up with aching legs, a throbbing head, and a stuffed up nose. A cold coming on you say? Yes, I suppose if I were a normal person, I would have diagnosed myself that way. Instead, I decided that my legs were aching because of the yoga tape I had done the previous morning, my head was throbbing because I drank too much wine with my sister-in-law, and my nose was stuffed up because the heat had come on too much during the night, and I am somewhat allergic to the heat. Why couldn’t a grown woman identify the signs of a head cold? Here’s why – since I had kids almost seven years ago, I have not come down with my own cold. Much as the weather on the east coast always comes up from the south, the sickness in my house always comes up from the kids. If one’s got a runny nose, soon we all will; if one’s puking, soon we all will. At the moment, all of the kids are healthy, so it appears that four months after my husband left for Afghanistan, I have finally followed the advice of countless friends and family. They told me do make sure I take time out for myself, and I have indeed found a little something for myself, a raging head cold. But the bright red nose, scratchy voice, and nagging cough are not enough. On Friday night while eating a dinner of frozen pizza, I burned the top of my mouth, and thanks to all of the decongestants I’ve had to take and all of the open-mouthed breathing I’ve had to do, the burn has hung on for a good 6 days. And still that is not what is bothering me most – what upsets me most is that it has been 4 days since I had a glass of milk, and that may be the longest I’ve ever gone without one in my life .
Monday night, in the grip of this horrible cold, I got the kids to bed and went looking for some dinner. All I could create with the energy I had left was a few pieces of rewarmed frozen pizza. I realize that is no substitute for chicken soup, but at the time it seemed adequate. However, two hours later when I went to bed to read for a while, my nose sealed itself off so completely, I had a flickering thought that I might need to summon professional help before I passed out from lack of oxygen. I was also treated to a brief daydream where my 6-year-old, coming to sneak into bed with me, finds my cold unconscious body on the floor. Since neither scenario gave me a warm happy feeling, I ran for the Sudafed and managed to it down, alternating breathing with swallowing. In a few minutes, the medicine did open my airway again. As I sat propped up in bed trying to determine what caused such a quick and dangerous acceleration in my symptoms, I could find only one culprit – the cheese from the rewarmed frozen pizza.
A quick trip to WebMD produces the following advice: “While you have a cold, avoid dairy products, which tend to make mucus thicker…” (I apologize for using the word mucus, but even the Microsoft Thesaurus can’t come up with a more pleasant word than that.) I guess everyone has some idea that dairy products can make a cold worse, but really, I hardly considered the cheese on a frozen pizza to be a true dairy product and the amount of it was so small, I was astonished to think that it almost caused me to keel over. However, I had nowhere else to place the blame, so I decided for the safety of the household, I should avoid all dairy products, especially milk, until my symptoms showed a marked improvement.
I know that most of the population use milk in one of three ways – on top of cereal, in coffee, or as an accompaniment to a cookie. I use milk as a mainstay beverage, second only to water (and occasionally chardonnay) on my list of most consumed liquids. I love it - skim milk, chocolate milk, milk in my tea (I don’t use milk on my cereal but that is related to my inability to eat mushy food, which is really immaterial here). I feel real pity for the unlucky souls with milk allergies or lactose intolerance, who can’t down a cold glass of milk. They are truly carrying one of life’s heavy burdens. I have had so much milk throughout my life, that I am convinced that my bones must be larger and stronger than the average girl. I fully expect that in the future, when some unlucky home invaders throw my 80-year-old body down the stairs, instead of breaking a hip I’ll hop right up and beat them over the head with my fireplace poker. Although I’ve read that alcohol consumption can cause you to lose calcium, the stores I built up as a child must be enormous, and even now with the milk I drink, I must at least be breaking even.
Shortly before poor Dr. Spock teetered off to that great pediatrician’s office in the sky, the anti-milk people conned him into holding a press conference to say he had been wrong all of those years when he recommended that children drink milk. This seemed like such an obvious and shameless manipulation of a feeble elderly man, I assumed the backlash against the anti-milk people would be swift and complete. Unfortunately, I was wrong.
Last spring when I took my six-year-old to the clinic to get her school physical done, all of the clinic’s regular pediatricians were either gone or busy, so we saw a contract doctor. These are nonmilitary doctors that the army hires on a year-to-year basis. I suppose there are reasons why doctors would choose to work under those terms, but I doubt that the reasons are “I am making too much money as a successful well-respected private doctor” or “My vast stores of knowledge regarding cutting edge health care techniques are wasted in the private sector.” I believe the doctor we saw might have given her reason as “I am so crazy that I cannot convince even the most desperate sick children to become my patients, so I thought I’d find a job where kids are forced to see me.” I attempted to explain to this woman that my daughter had ear tubes put in earlier that year, not because of repeated ear infections but because she couldn’t hear anything and kept failing her school hearing screenings. Before I could finish, the doctor immediately began muttering. Here is a transcript of our conversation. Imagine the doctor’s voice as similar to a mental patient speaking to herself, and my voice as similar to a flabbergasted increasingly annoyed mother speaking to a mental patient:
Crazy Doctor: “It’s cows milk. No babies need to be drinking any cow’s milk. No children need to be drinking any cow’s milk. It’s cow’s milk. She’s allergic to cow’s milk.”
Me: “Actually, she’s not allergic to milk”
Crazy Doctor: “Yes, she is. No babies need to be drinking any cow’s milk”
Me: “No, she’s not, she drinks it all the time without any problem”
Crazy Doctor: “Yes, she is”
Me: “Well, what should she be drinking?”
Crazy Doctor: “No babies need to be drinking any cow’s milk. No children need to be drinking any cow’s milk. It’s cow’s milk. She’s allergic to cow’s milk.”
Me: “Then where should she be getting her calcium?”
Crazy Doctor: “Not from cow’s milk, from soy milk and broccoli”
Me: “Could you just sign that paper there please?”
Fortunately, I had six years of being a mom under my belt so I had enough confidence in myself to write this woman off as a wacko and continue to give my kids milk. While they are fans of broccoli, I don’t think they would be willing to eat 10 cups a day to get their calcium. And how could I keep them from the milk? How could they ever enjoy an Oreo for goodness sake?
Four days ago I also gave up my nightly glass (okay, sometimes two) of wine, partially because I thought it might aggravate my sore throat and partially because I thought that the alcohol on top of the sudafed might be a more potent sleep aid than I needed. After a long day tending to the needs of the 6-, 4-, and 2-year-old, that glass of wine is the most anticipated part of my evenings, topped only by kiddie bedtime. And yet I feel like I could continue to go without it if I had a good reason (I can’t think of any). But for four days now I have filled cup after cup of milk for the kiddies, becoming more and more envious with every pour. I have stood by and sipped my water in the hope of speeding my recovery and preventing my demise, but I am so ready for a milk fix. Tomorrow we are going to spend the weekend with my sister, and the first thing I plan to do when we are settled into her apartment is help myself to a tall cold, glass of milk. My nose may seal up again and I may pass out, but I am willing to take that risk knowing that at least there will be somebody there to look after the kiddies.
Monday night, in the grip of this horrible cold, I got the kids to bed and went looking for some dinner. All I could create with the energy I had left was a few pieces of rewarmed frozen pizza. I realize that is no substitute for chicken soup, but at the time it seemed adequate. However, two hours later when I went to bed to read for a while, my nose sealed itself off so completely, I had a flickering thought that I might need to summon professional help before I passed out from lack of oxygen. I was also treated to a brief daydream where my 6-year-old, coming to sneak into bed with me, finds my cold unconscious body on the floor. Since neither scenario gave me a warm happy feeling, I ran for the Sudafed and managed to it down, alternating breathing with swallowing. In a few minutes, the medicine did open my airway again. As I sat propped up in bed trying to determine what caused such a quick and dangerous acceleration in my symptoms, I could find only one culprit – the cheese from the rewarmed frozen pizza.
A quick trip to WebMD produces the following advice: “While you have a cold, avoid dairy products, which tend to make mucus thicker…” (I apologize for using the word mucus, but even the Microsoft Thesaurus can’t come up with a more pleasant word than that.) I guess everyone has some idea that dairy products can make a cold worse, but really, I hardly considered the cheese on a frozen pizza to be a true dairy product and the amount of it was so small, I was astonished to think that it almost caused me to keel over. However, I had nowhere else to place the blame, so I decided for the safety of the household, I should avoid all dairy products, especially milk, until my symptoms showed a marked improvement.
I know that most of the population use milk in one of three ways – on top of cereal, in coffee, or as an accompaniment to a cookie. I use milk as a mainstay beverage, second only to water (and occasionally chardonnay) on my list of most consumed liquids. I love it - skim milk, chocolate milk, milk in my tea (I don’t use milk on my cereal but that is related to my inability to eat mushy food, which is really immaterial here). I feel real pity for the unlucky souls with milk allergies or lactose intolerance, who can’t down a cold glass of milk. They are truly carrying one of life’s heavy burdens. I have had so much milk throughout my life, that I am convinced that my bones must be larger and stronger than the average girl. I fully expect that in the future, when some unlucky home invaders throw my 80-year-old body down the stairs, instead of breaking a hip I’ll hop right up and beat them over the head with my fireplace poker. Although I’ve read that alcohol consumption can cause you to lose calcium, the stores I built up as a child must be enormous, and even now with the milk I drink, I must at least be breaking even.
Shortly before poor Dr. Spock teetered off to that great pediatrician’s office in the sky, the anti-milk people conned him into holding a press conference to say he had been wrong all of those years when he recommended that children drink milk. This seemed like such an obvious and shameless manipulation of a feeble elderly man, I assumed the backlash against the anti-milk people would be swift and complete. Unfortunately, I was wrong.
Last spring when I took my six-year-old to the clinic to get her school physical done, all of the clinic’s regular pediatricians were either gone or busy, so we saw a contract doctor. These are nonmilitary doctors that the army hires on a year-to-year basis. I suppose there are reasons why doctors would choose to work under those terms, but I doubt that the reasons are “I am making too much money as a successful well-respected private doctor” or “My vast stores of knowledge regarding cutting edge health care techniques are wasted in the private sector.” I believe the doctor we saw might have given her reason as “I am so crazy that I cannot convince even the most desperate sick children to become my patients, so I thought I’d find a job where kids are forced to see me.” I attempted to explain to this woman that my daughter had ear tubes put in earlier that year, not because of repeated ear infections but because she couldn’t hear anything and kept failing her school hearing screenings. Before I could finish, the doctor immediately began muttering. Here is a transcript of our conversation. Imagine the doctor’s voice as similar to a mental patient speaking to herself, and my voice as similar to a flabbergasted increasingly annoyed mother speaking to a mental patient:
Crazy Doctor: “It’s cows milk. No babies need to be drinking any cow’s milk. No children need to be drinking any cow’s milk. It’s cow’s milk. She’s allergic to cow’s milk.”
Me: “Actually, she’s not allergic to milk”
Crazy Doctor: “Yes, she is. No babies need to be drinking any cow’s milk”
Me: “No, she’s not, she drinks it all the time without any problem”
Crazy Doctor: “Yes, she is”
Me: “Well, what should she be drinking?”
Crazy Doctor: “No babies need to be drinking any cow’s milk. No children need to be drinking any cow’s milk. It’s cow’s milk. She’s allergic to cow’s milk.”
Me: “Then where should she be getting her calcium?”
Crazy Doctor: “Not from cow’s milk, from soy milk and broccoli”
Me: “Could you just sign that paper there please?”
Fortunately, I had six years of being a mom under my belt so I had enough confidence in myself to write this woman off as a wacko and continue to give my kids milk. While they are fans of broccoli, I don’t think they would be willing to eat 10 cups a day to get their calcium. And how could I keep them from the milk? How could they ever enjoy an Oreo for goodness sake?
Four days ago I also gave up my nightly glass (okay, sometimes two) of wine, partially because I thought it might aggravate my sore throat and partially because I thought that the alcohol on top of the sudafed might be a more potent sleep aid than I needed. After a long day tending to the needs of the 6-, 4-, and 2-year-old, that glass of wine is the most anticipated part of my evenings, topped only by kiddie bedtime. And yet I feel like I could continue to go without it if I had a good reason (I can’t think of any). But for four days now I have filled cup after cup of milk for the kiddies, becoming more and more envious with every pour. I have stood by and sipped my water in the hope of speeding my recovery and preventing my demise, but I am so ready for a milk fix. Tomorrow we are going to spend the weekend with my sister, and the first thing I plan to do when we are settled into her apartment is help myself to a tall cold, glass of milk. My nose may seal up again and I may pass out, but I am willing to take that risk knowing that at least there will be somebody there to look after the kiddies.
posted by Shannon at 10:19 PM
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