Miracle Cold-Remedy Tea and Also Why I Hate Camping

Camping [kamping]: noun 1. The activity of spending ridiculous amounts of money to live like a homeless person. 2. Voluntary torture.

This week I’ve been under the weather. Nothing life-threatening, just a bad cold, but miserable none the less. At the first sign – an irritating sore throat last Sunday evening – I made my miracle tea. I couldn’t tell you how I discovered this simple, but effective cold remedy tea without first telling my camping horror story, so here goes.

Several years ago, my husband decided our family’s summer vacation should be camping. Now before all you camp-lovers start heckling me, I’m not talking about resort camping where you sleep in an RV on a pillow top mattress, pull your dinner out of the fridge, and decide between the swimming pool and karaoke at the lodge for your evening activities.

My husband’s idea of camping is survival training in the wilderness, because ever pre-teen girl (as our three daughters were at the time) ought to learn how to live off the land, right? After many failed attempts to get out of this camping experience, we finally settled on a compromise. I would go along if he chose a camping spot with plumbing available.

The morning we planned to leave, I woke up with a sore throat. When I told Dave I wasn’t feeling very good, he thought I was just trying to get out of camping again, so I decided to just suck it up, take some pain killers and go on the trip. The car was loaded and we drove several hours to a campsite a friend of a friend had given Dave directions to somewhere near the North Dakota/Canada border. We were, as Dave had planned, about 20 miles from the nearest tiny town, and though there was a public fishing dock on the river and a permanent out house (yuck!), the site lacked any other services. This was not what I signed up for.

The tent was pitched, wood was gathered and the fire was started (with flint and cattail fluff). By the time we headed for bed, I was pretty sure I had strep throat. I had a fever, chills and I could hardly swallow. To make matters worse, despite my best efforts to keep every inch of skin covered, I had to pull 9 ticks off me when I was changing then attempt to sleep on the ground in a sleeping bag while the temperature plummeted. I don’t know how cold it got, but I could see my breath when I finally gave up on sleep at 4 am. I got up to get a fire going the make something hot to drink.

When Dave woke up that morning, he saw how sick I was and decided we better go home early, so after breakfast, we packed up camp. When we went to load the car, we discovered the cooler had leaked and flooded the interior of our car. Bummer. We used every towel we brought to soak it up then finally got the car loaded.

But when Dave tried to start the car…nothing. The battery was completely dead. Dave rescued his cell phones from where they had all been imprisoned during our technology free “vacation” and powered it on.

No service.

Dave and I each took a phone and began hiking in different directions to the high ground in search of a signal. After hiking about a mile and climbing a rocky slope, I finally got one bar and called AAA, but the call dropped before help was on the way. After two hours, about two dozen dropped calls, another hike and another climb up a higher hill, we finally got through, only to discover that help was no less than three hours away.

I could have cried, if that wouldn’t have hurt my throat even worse. I prayed my way back to the car and somehow made it.

Lunch time had come and gone, but we didn’t want to unpack the car. Dave got the fishing gear and took the girls down the river while I laid down in the car. They were well out of sight when I heard the motor of a truck. I was the only one to run to the road the flag down the driver before he passed us by. My throat was so swollen my words were all jumbled. I felt like I was trying to speak around a tennis ball lodged in my windpipe. He couldn’t understand me, but he followed me all the same. He must have sensed the desperation.

Dave and the girls heard the engine and came back while the stranger was jumpstarting our car. I tearfully thanked the stranger before crashing in the passenger seat. A soon as we were in cell phone range, Dave canceled AAA. We drove straight to the urgent care clinic.

The doctor said he’d never seen such a bad case of strep.

And it was stubborn, too. Two weeks and two rounds of antibiotics later, I still couldn’t kick the sickness. I began searching the internet for natural remedies as an alternative to yet another set of antibiotics and that’s when I found my miracle tea. I started drinking it four times a day and the strep was gone in two days.

I don’t remember where I found it anymore, or the exact ratios the source recommended, so I’ll just tell you what I do when I start getting sick.

Mix about 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and 2 tablespoons of local raw honey into 8 to 10 oz. of hot (not boiling) water. Stir. Drink several times a day. Accompany with lots of prayer.

I don’t actually measure anymore, just pour until it looks right. If the vinegar taste is too strong for you at first, make it with less vinegar and more honey. I make it with two parts honey to one part vinegar for my younger kids because they won’t drink it otherwise.

If I understand it correctly, the honey is a natural antibiotic and the apple cider vinegar adjusts your body’s pH levels to make you an inhospitable host for bacteria.

Before I started drinking this concoction, I got both strep and bronchitis at least once a year. I still catch colds, but in the last few years, since I have started taking this tea at the first sign of sickness, I have always felt better in a few days with no need for antibiotics. This is only my personal experience, but it works for me and my kids.