DRINKING LOTS OF LIQUIDS PREVENTS MOUTH SORES AND CRACKED LIPS?

Ethan trying to drink from the cup

A few days ago, Baby Ethan was admitted into the hospital because he could not eat, and was getting dehydrated. The reason was, his mouth was full of nasty, painful sores.

Funny enough, I spoke to my dentist a few days before my baby got sick, and he said, nobody really knows what causes mouth sores.....

The Chinese believe it's the dry weather. And you know what? I nearly could not get a single hospital room for myself that day because the paediatric ward was full, with many kids having similar problems. Boy! Who knew!

Ethan, playing with the screws on the pole that hoist the IV bottle to relieve his boredom
He was constantly wearing a bib, slobbering like a water fall because he can't swallow his saliva

So, anyways, for 5 days and 3 nights, the poor kid was hooked up to an IV machine. I didn't allow him to crawl on the hospital room floor because people walk with dirty shoes that went god knows where. And he wasn't allowed into the playroom, discouraged by Ethan's paediatrician who said it's full of germs .... don't want him catching something else while at the hospital. Anyone who have children will know a kid can go stir crazy stuck in a baby cot for so many days. Luckily, he's such a good kid, not much complains, except when he cries in pain when I try to feed him a little bit of solids.

Poor kid asleep. Check out hand!

Now the Chinese believe, when the body is "heaty", it's best to drink lots of liquids ... something "cooling" like coconut water, watermelon, boiled sugar cane water, boiled barley water or one of those sweeten herbal drinks, and to cut down on tangerines or one of those many Chinese oranges which are in season now. It's a little hard to avoid oranges, seeing every other person has bought a crate of these juicy fruits for the Chinese New Year holidays.

Darn! I could kick myself for not taking faster action, when I saw the first ulcer. But it's too late. The poor kid has mouth ulcers the size of moon craters, some bleeding and lots of it. My brother and his wife tells me, they have cracked lips.

Baby Ethan's out now, and safely sleeping in his familiar cot. And mummy has to get up at ungodly hours to get him to drink lots of water.

Jasmin
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CUCUMBER TO REDUCE COUGH AND SORE THROAT

Asians believe that the humble cucumber is good to reduce cough and sore throat.

My dad had planted a cucumber plant in his garden, and had invited his office staff to take some since there were quite a lot to harvest. Before you can say stop, ALL the organic cucumbers were snapped off.

Now, we never expected cucumbers to be very popular, especially with some of the young, 20-something bachelors. Some of these guys profess not to even like vegetables. Plus there were lots of other lpvely organic vegetables growing in the garden for their taking. There were lots of long beans, spinach, sayur manis, chillis, cekur, ulam raja, kang kung (also called water spinach, swamp cabbage, water convolvulus or water morning-glory).

Yup, dad has a huge garden, and a great part time gardener.

Anyways, back to those cucumbers, apparently, the whole office was down with a bacterial infection. People were coughing, lots of lozenges were passed around. The Malay staff believe cucumbers would help soothe their sore throats. The Chinese meanwhile believe that cucumbers have "cooling" properties.

Good to know.

I asked the guys how they eat them, and most of them just chop up the cukes into small chunks and eat them raw, just like that with rice and sambal and curry. Others like to juice it (I recommend adding a bit of raw honey for flavor and sweetness if you are not used to having raw cucumber juice. Alternatively add a pinch of sea salt and omit the honey).

Anyways, it's been two weeks since those guys harvested them cukes, and the plant has died on us. Dad said those termites are destroying his plants.

That's terrible. Now everyone has to buy them from the nearby supermarket.

Jasmin
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