Our house has once more laid low, this time by the dual demons of injury and illness.

I’m hobbled, recovering from knee surgery, and the boys have been cycling through waxing and waning phases of never-ending coughs. Then, they both got strep, which in some ways is great because we can give them antibiotics and push them out the door to school the next day, and in other ways is terrible because the reason we know it’s strep is the puking.

You see, we have a puker in the house.

Every time my one boy gets sick, he pukes. Has stomach flu, pukes. Regular flu? Puke. Hand, foot and mouth? Puke. My chief memory of his infancy is of cleaning up vomit. My husband and I had it down to military precision, in which I would yell “TIM!” and he would run into the kids’ room holding a spray bottle and paper towels, and I would run in the opposite direction holding out a wailing child like an offering, racing to the bathtub to denude and hose him down.

And though our other child isn’t an expert puker, he certainly does dabble.

This round of sickness got me thinking about my own childhood illnesses, though, and the barbaric and wonderful treatments we were put through to manage them.

First of all, there were no viral or bacterial causes of disease when I was growing up. According to my Greek grandmother, all illness could be traced to three root causes:

1. Walking outside with wet hair.

2. Walking barefoot on wood or stone floors.

3. Air conditioning.

When I was sick as a child, she’d light an alcohol-soaked cotton ball in a glass jar, then quickly remove it, causing the glass jar to stick to my back. I guess it was supposed to draw out something foul – whatever miasma attacked barefoot kids, maybe?

They called the treatment “vendouzes,” though I have since learned that other people call it “cupping,” and celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow pay thousands of dollars to be subjected to it.

My American mother, who was horrified at such Old World quackery, was more in line with the Vicks-and-antibiotics style of 1980s medicine. Things have certainly changed, but I remember when antibiotics were handed out like candy – though come to think of it, even candy isn’t handed out like candy anymore.

And when we were sick, there wasn’t great joy in staying home from school – mostly because, unless you were partial to soap operas and “The Price Is Right,” the TV stunk. Now my sons have hot-and-cold entertainment, video games and Netflix at the tips of their fingers.

I do, however, douse them in Vicks VapoRub.

“Not the spicy cream!” my younger son cries when he spies the little blue jar.

I slather it on them like it’s butter and they’re a Thanksgiving turkey, wrap them in warm clothes and turn up the humidifier so high you can write ransom notes on the windows.

Periodically, I will demand that they blow their nose. If they balk, I threaten to pull out “The Snot Sucker,” a torture instrument from their baby days that literally sucks all the mucus out of their noses. I boast an unblemished record of compliance.

My Greek dad, however, who is his mother’s son, will tell me every time the boys are sick that it’s solely due to the temperature at which we keep the home.

“The air conditioner,” he said solemnly, after I told him our younger boy had pneumonia.

But antibiotics worked on him, and, despite the continued pervasiveness of central air, he recovered fully.

As for me, I don’t get many sick days now, but when I do, I’m partial to cherry NyQuil, orange juice and canned chicken noodle soup, heated to a temperature that would make Hades blush.

And you know what?

It works.

At least as well as sticking burning-hot jars to your back does, anyway. And I never, ever go barefoot.

To learn more about Georgia Garvey, visit GeorgiaGarvey.com.

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