The Mysterious Rash: Part 2

     Desperate indeed I was. Handling things well, I wasn't outwardly showing my discomfort, so much so that most everyone in the program commented on how happy I was despite my condition. One evening, I vomited  and missed the next day's classes to recover. So, it was at the point where Uttarra (the program director) had to intervene, for her sake as much as for mine. She suggested a homeopathetic doctor. I was willing to say yes to anything, so later that day I went to the doctor. He laughed over how simple my situation was: I had acidity. All I needed to do was take two pills four times a day, another two pills twice a day, and drink a glass of water twice a day with ten drops of some medicine in it. Easy enough, right?

     If only. Not only can I not touch any of these medicines, I must put them in the cap and use that to swallow them, but after a week of them my conditions were the same. At this point Uttarra also suggested I change my diet again and so I began packing lunch again, to no avail.

   Then, a professor noticed my plight and suggested kokam. We all sat in Uttarra's office and talked about home remedies of tulsi seeds and kokam and rose leaf jam. I would drink kokam sherbets and apply dried kokam, soaked in water for a few minutes, to my rash, and drink tulsi seeds soaked in water overnight every morning inside a glass of milk, and eat a spoon full of the rose jam every morning, to cool my body down, because both the rash and the diarrhea are a result of too much body heat. I learned from the professor that according to Ayurvedic medicine there are different types of body compositions and I am a pitta person, a heat based person. The summer heat which has increased dramatically these last three weeks combined with spicy food intake has irritated my body and given the rash and stomach problems, or the acidity. Kokam, a fruit, and tulsi leaves, plant leaves, combined with buttermilk and ice cream will cool my body down. I was thrilled to hear the answer I was looking for was ice cream (among other things of course).

     And it worked! As of this last week without medicine, and just now with a glass of kokam sherbet and a glass of buttermilk I have no more rash and no more stomach problems! Home remedies were all that I needed. This meshed well with my long held distrust and dislike of pills and of the medical industrial complex, which is a whole other story. To leave it like this: now I am itch free, pill free, and hap-hap-happy.