Natural Remedies, or Unto Us a King is Born

I recently had to call poison control because my beloved 170 pound dog, Atticus, drank a cup and a half of myrrh. I want to explain this. Here I go.

I want broken things fixed. I'm pretty sure that's a sign of a spoiled, middle class, 21st century American. If something is wrong with my car, my dog, my relationship, me... I want it dealt with. Now. I want it back to where it should be, no lingering scars, no evidence that anything has changed, no blemish. At 47, however, I have begun coming across things that have to be "lived with," rather than "fixed". I have a shoulder problem that must be "adapted to". I have to avoid certain kinds of movements, never sleep with my arm over my head, take medication when it gets really bad, and just deal with it as if it were a normal part of me. Something unfixable is a normal part of me. I hate this. I want to be able to slide face forward into home plate if I have to. I don't want to have to be nursing my pathetic, middle-aged shoulder - and I definitely do not want a pinch runner.

I'm pretty sure if I had a brain tumor my dad would advise me to, "soak it in epsom salts". Another favorite of his, is "gargle with salt water." I swear he had me gargle with salt water once when I had menstrual cramps, but that can't possibly be true. It runs in my family, this... alternativeness. My great-grandmother treated her heart problems with garlic. She'd get sick, her lips would turn blue, and she'd hurry home to boil and eat whole cloves of the stuff. I love garlic, personally, so I'm all for that - but somewhere along the way I decided that I wanted to try out western medicine. I think it was when Ibuprofen came along and poof! - nary a menstrual cramp for the rest of my life! I was sold. Give me traditional drugs, in large doses, and keep your cute little home remedies. But then, I aged. Doctors began to look at my complaints and shrug. There are things, it turns out, that we just don't bother taking care of on people over the age of 30. Backs and shoulders, "go out", "get arthritic". If I were 12, they'd try something. Now, it's, "just life". Recently, I injured my back in an ugly incident that occured while teaching public high school. Doctors throughout the adventure gave me everything from shots in my back, to muscle relaxers and Vicodin, in very high doses. Nothing helped. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't drive, I couldn't bend over to pick up my socks. Trips to new doctors yielded new medicines which, when they worked, made me too sick (or high) to care. A specialist was called in. He stood at the foot of the exam table and told me that my back was, "a mess ", and that nothing would help. "Seriously," I said. "Nothing? What about physical therapy? What about surgery?" "Physical therapy might feel good while you get it, but it doesn't really do anything," he told me. Then, "I guess we could do surgery, but where would we start? It's a mess." Bottom line, my western medicine man told me that only drugs and a new line of work stood any chance of helping at all. I was pissed. I was hurt. If I'd come in with this kind of pain as a kid, they'd have done something. Right? I felt like I was too old to bother with. I felt betrayed, forsaken. They might as well have come right out and said it just wasn't cost effective to help me. It's not like I was going to go out and play quarterback for the Colts, or even hammer nails, poor concrete, or contribute somehow to advancing the infrastructure. There was nothing, I thought, to gain by fixing me. I felt like I was just supposed to go home and start shopping from that catalogue full of gadgets for the disabled.

Then I learned something. I have to learn things all the time, and it is, frankly an annoyance to me. I would prefer to think I have arrived at my answers, and can just sit happily on them; but the painfully obvious fact that I am wrong all the time turns its ugly glare at me, and I'm forced to reconsider. It turns out that while, when you are 12 you are supposed to be learning to listen; at 47, you need to be learning not to listen, at least not all of the time. Just because they were done with me, didn't mean I was done.

When my partner, Nora, and I met and got together, her dowry consisted of a cat, a parrot, and an assortment of freaky looking oils, herbs, bulbs, leaves, and teas. I half expected eye-of-newt to be somewhere in the mix. As time went on, when I had a headache, came up sore from gardening or housecleaning, or she just wanted to please me - she'd brew up some concotion to put in my bathwater, serve as a tea, rub on my back, or, occasionally, burn throughout the house. Often, there was some relief from these ministrations, and, naturally, it feels good when someone is taking care of you - thus began the slow turn on the spit of my heart. After the doctors dismissed me, alternative healer, Kitchen Witch, wise woman, tea making, herb growing, barefoot, happy hippie, Nora set me on a course of yoga poses, stretching exercises, comfrey baths, massage, healthy vegetarian meals, meditation, and herb teas, and, voila! I feel quite a bit better! I've lost weight, I exercise, and the alternative methods (combined with the strength of my seething hatred for the doctor who told me I was a lost cause), have actually given me hope that one day I will rap again. A hope, I fear, that absolutely no one else shares.

As if this wasn't evidence enough of the truths inherent in some alternative practices, just as my back was starting to feel a lot better, I turned up lame with near fatal athlete's foot, and was cured by myrrh. Yes, myrrh - the stuff they brought Jesus that none of us ever understood. (Why, we wondered, are they bringing a little baby frankincense and myrrh? How about, Speaks in Tongues Elmo? Or, a star of Bethlehem nightlight? But myrrh? For a baby?)

Honest to god, Myrrh is a miracle drug. It healed my leper-like feet overnight. Unfortunately, my 170 pound dog, Atticus, drank a cup and a half of my myrrh and olive oil mixture. I worship dogs in general, and Atticus in particular. I have no trouble believing that god will return to Earth as a dog, and though Atticus is not perfect, he is a very, very good dog, and I believe he would be a fine choice for the incarnation, even though he did drink my myrrh. I know he drank it, (though there are 4 other dogs in the house), because there was a flurry of bodily fluid incidents emanating from him all the live long day, and well into the night. I'm not sure what inspired him to drink the mixture, except that he loves anything from the fats family. He would rather have a cube of butter than a sirloin steak. Butter is one thing, but essential oils are not always safe to ingest, so I was scared to death that Atticus was going to die a weird, vaguely Biblical death. But the Poison Control Hotline relieved my fears. It turns out that myrrh stimulates digestion, relieves bronchial congestion, and aids in the elimination of bad breath. All good things as far as Attie's concerned. The poison control people were great - but before I hung up they had to ask, "Where in the world did your dog get a cup and a half of myrrh?" "From the same guys who brought him the frankincense," I answered.