At the end of this week a second Covid jab will come to fruition enough to have the world and all its prior temptations included at my feet again, rendering my fervently beloved excuse for solitude more or less invalid. I have learned to be naturally lighthearted anyway about what may commonly work for others but will harvest different results in me personally, not out of megalomaniac delusions of grandeur, but simply life lessons learned from foregoing medical experiences.
Time and time again I have tried my hardest to share in the enthusiasm of yet another doctor setting his or her sights on a cure for numerous somatic discomforts over the years.“Sure, I’ll be a guinea pig for you and your students. You want as many pictures possible of this disfiguring edema? No problem. I see, you want me to stop taking these pills against the unbearable itching, even though they really work well, so you can test a new medicine against unbearable itching.”
My Belgian doctor, the one I eventually chose seventeen years ago and placed full trust in, without any doubt for very illegitimate reasons, is lovely and compassionate and she’s made some really helpful interventions that I still value highly as rules to live by, but to some extent even she is missing my mark regularly.
This was most hilariously manifested when she sternly suggested that my predisposition for severe allergies was probably caused by undefined fillers in the medication she prescribed against it to begin with, persistently burrowing herself insurmountably into the chicken or egg dilemma she consequently created, just because she wanted to help ease my suffering, bless her.
With only five days left in legitimate confinement, I fool myself it’s this blissful nescience I need to cherish. However, discovering a first flower on the Echinacea Purpurea I planted earlier this year, checking off my wish list for Les Pierres gardens, sparked my curiosity into researching the many medicinal uses of this plant. To my surprise, data from in vitro and clinical studies suggest that Echinacea purpurea can effectively protect against infections with coronaviruses. Safest to stay home even beyond Friday, right?