WordPress Daily Prompt: Placebo Effect

If you could create a painless, inexpensive cure for a single ailment, what would you cure and why?

Photographers, artists, poets: show us a HEALTH.

The photo originates from my first aid help days in the local village. The local police paid a visit and told us all about the evils of certain drugs. We had quite a selection to choose from and this was one of the happy pill selections.

So here we are again, making a choice to change the happiness of manhood. I remember, many years ago, when my grandmother had various ailments. I probably will have various ailments too when I grow older (OK, I have some now). What did the wise doctor do? At that time, in the sixties, there were fewer cures than today, so he gave my grandmother tablets: little white tablets and she was happy. She felt a lot better, believed in the tablets and that seemed to be the solution. The word “placebo” was not in common use at that time, but that was what she was getting. A cure for all illnesses, perhaps a pain reliever, but it seemed to work, although the pill could just have well as been something from the candy shop. It was all in the mind.

I will not be creating any cure for any ailment, there are too many to choose from and to be realistic, at one time or the other our clockwork runs down and you cannot wind it up anymore, so-called end station. For some it arrives too early and for others no so early: the luck of the draw.

Being a golden oldie, you make experiences through life. Mr. Swiss is also a golden oldie, he is almost platinum, so we both have our little ailments, some more than others. The uncle doctor gives you tablets and medicine as a help. As the Mr. Swiss ailments are other than the Mrs. Angloswiss ailments, we have to organise our placebos cures. They come in all sorts of boxes, blister packing, little bottles and sometimes in tubes according to their purpose and can be quite colourful. This can present problems. The space we need for these little helpers must be organised, and we have noticed over the years that we need more and more space.

We have now progressed to a complete drawer in a cupboard, where everything is distributed. I even began to file the various accompanying leaflets to the medicine, but then I realised they were all on Internet so I decided this was a waste of space. Just a click on the description of the medicine and it can be read in the necessary language. It might be that Mr. Swiss and I share the same medicine. That is quite useful, especially if my supplies are running low. We do pill sharing. If we are really at rock bottom with our addiction needs, just a visit to the doctor (we even share the same doctor) is necessary to pick up the refill. Sometimes it can be a little bit dangerous, just making a grip into the supply. Some tablets resemble the others, and I do not want my blood pressure soaring through the ceiling or Mr. Swiss certainly does not want his blood sugar level to break records. However, we now have a small shelf reserved in the kitchen for the daily needs: his on the left and mine on the right, just to keep things organised. Yes the life of the aging can be quite fun sometimes.

There is also a mental time table, which reminds me I must take my Vitamin B tablet now. They are not just Vitamin B, but an anti ageing Vitamin B, especially for diabetics. These are quite expensive and not available on Swiss prescription as they are a German product. My doctor even advised me to make a trip to Germany (only an hour away) to buy them in Germany as they are much cheaper.

Switzerland is quite well known for pharmaceutical production and we have a couple of large Swiss companies. Unfortunately we also have Swiss prices, and it is a known fact that our pharmaceutical products can be bought at cheaper prices in other countries in Europe.

So there we have it, two golden/platinum oldies making a hobby of sorting their daily dosis of happy pills and medicine. If our problems would be solved with a fantastic placebo, life would become boring. Our main conversational subject will be missed, our medical organisation system will be redundant, but we will have more room in the drawer for something else. We could play chess (I cannot and Mr. Swiss is not so keen on it), perhaps more gardening if it were not for our back problems and oncoming arthritis. I could take up cooking, but I already have that integrated in my house hobbies.

Mr. Swiss would have more time to read and I would have more time to blog. Oh – what a future lies before us. 

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WordPress Daily Prompt: Red Pill, Blue Pill

If you could get all the nutrition you needed in a day with a pill — no worrying about what to eat, no food preparation — would you do it?

Photographers, artists, poets: show us NOURISHMENT.

You want to do what! Replace our beautiful, well formed, 100% veal swiss sausages with a pill. It took me more than forty years to perfection my ideal of Swiss cooking and now I can just throw experience and knowhow away; just swallow one of these and you have time for all the other things you want to do.

I do not think so. My mum always said “I pity your old man (she meant husband – she was a cockney). All he is going to get is fish fingers when you get married.” Sorry mum, but you could only cook what your mum cooked and to be quite honest, it was not my taste. Admittedly money was scarce at the time, but the saying “as long as we have food on the table, is all that matters” did not really impress me. It meant that life’s nourishment consisted of boiled potatoes with every meal. As a vegetable we had greens (some sort of English type cabbage) and a piece of meat (I was too young to know the difference in quality). One day I rebelled. I think it was the first sign of enjoying the art of cooking. I said “just a mixed salad and some meat will do”. I was looked upon as a cuckoo’s egg that had been laid in the family nest, but at least I ate it all.

Later I spent two years in an Indian-Swiss household and then I really learnt how to spice my food. Mum only used salt and pepper (I think). I discovered chilli, cumin, turmeric, cardomum, coriander, and cooking in Ghee instead of oil.

The next step to my culinary development was catering for a six-headed family every day, until the kids left. It is now just me and Mr. Swiss – at weekends and evenings my eldest son. It was then I discovered Rösti (a fried potato dish), Bratwurst (see photo above) and geschnetzeltes (finely chopped meat usually served in a cream sauce). Switzerland having Germany, France and Italy as neighbours, our cooking had a definite continental influence.

Now I should replace my creative talents in the kitchen with a pill: no more shopping excursions in the morning, choosing the vegetable, examining the meat, and buying according to the seasonal offers? : no way.

The scene changes to lunch time..

“Love, what’s for dinner?”

“I thought I would serve one red one and a blue one today. There is now a new development.. At last the colours have been mixed. There is a striped pill in red and blue, and if you miss a salad on your plate, you can have a pill with an additional green stripe.”

“Anything to drink?”

“Of course. If your pill gets stuck in your throat, you can wash it down with a glass of water.”

So husband and wife sit down to a meal and after two minutes they are finished. There is no washing up to do: a stress free life. Wife has spent the morning playing with her vacuum cleaner and the extra time won by not cooking or shopping, she might play games on Facebook. She just loves café world, where you can build your own café, cook dishes and build various kitchen machines. She can even expand her virtual restaurant, accommodating more guests and have a wider choice on the food offered. In the meanwhile her husband decides to take a walk into town where he meets some friends at a street café. He orders a cup of coffee and a croissant. He finds it good that the wife has no stress with cooking, but now and again likes to reminisce how it used to be.

No, people, this is not my idea of life. As opposed to my mum that regarded cooking as a necessity, I enjoy cooking, especially since I am retired. I enjoy my shopping excursions, meeting people, talking to people, the real world. I enjoy designing a meal; savouring the flavours and spices, trying something new.

The bitter pill we might have to eat one day is that the world is not producing enough food for everyone. In our comfortable Western world, we see the pictures of starving children in other lands torn by wars and greed of their government. Those children would be thankful if their mothers gave them a pill or two every day to ensure their healthy survival. There are always two sides to every coin.