The week before last, my husband took our dog on his regular morning run through our local Red Rock canyon. On this particular day he happened to trip and fall. Being that our dog had no desire to be the cushion for his landing, he ran on … dragging my husband behind.
When he got home I tried not to panic. He tends to injure himself often. He was pretty banged up with a deep gash on the palm of his hand and a leg that had definitely seen better days. We cleaned the wounds and pulled out the ole staples: tea tree oil and what we had left of Egyptian magic. Later that day and all through the evening he was helping out a friend in retail, handling a lot of cash and merchandise and exposing his hand wound to all sorts of invaders.
The next morning, we noticed the wound on his hand was tender and red with an obvious red line traveling up his arm from the wound site. I knew some folks that had blood poisoning and knew that it was serious. Immediately we started him on LDM (Lomatium dissectum extract) and did research online and in our many holistic and medical books. Everything we came across said EMERGENCY!!! We try to find an alternative healing option for most things, but according to our research, it seemed that the situation called for something more.
The first emergency clinic he went to sent him elsewhere because they didn’t have a certain antibiotic shot they said he required. So he sat at the “Urgent” care facility for almost 2 hours before anyone addressed him. It turned out they didn’t have the shot and prescribed him pills instead. I filled the script on the way home. Have you read the side effects of these things?! I wasn’t quite confident about him chucking the prescribtion, but the red line had begun to fade from our immediate response with the LDM. We wanted to give Mother Nature one more chance before we pumped him full of chemical antibiotics.
Now let me state: I am in no way suggesting you ignore your doctor’s orders for such a serious condition. I am simply relaying a personal experience.
Making a Potato Poultice
We found a story online about potatoes. We decided to try it. We would monitor his condition carefully, and if any of the symptoms got worse he would immediately take the antibiotic. We had organic white potatoes on hand. We peeled and then shredded some of the pulp, and made a poultice type application for his wound. He kept it on for a few hours covered with plastic wrap and then let it dry out. He then followed it with an Epsom salt soak, followed again by drying and then more potatoes. He did this continuously for a couple of days. By the end of that first night, the line had faded dramatically. He continued with the LDM, but also took propolis, ate LOTS of garlic and drank lemon and cayenne water.
No antibiotics later, he is superb. The wound is healing wonderfully AND he didn’t get this NASTY cold/flu that I seem to have caught (probably from being in the hospital). I am confident that the propolis, vitamin C, garlic and LDM kept him from getting sick. They are helping me, too; just taking a bit longer than I’d like. We are happy, after the fact, that they didn’t have the shot. It gave us a chance to learn something new and add a new remedy to our arsenal. A few days ago I relayed the story to my grandmother and it turns out she used potato poultices all the time when she was growing up. The wisdom of our elders is awesome, folks.
We are not necessarily doctor people. We try to place our trust in Holistic medicine when we can, but we are also not opposed to using conventional methods when they are deemed necessary. I found it ironic that we ended up using our holistic arsenal anyway.
Blessed are we to have such possibilities at our fingertips! Here’s to health!
