Cayenne

Last wednesday I wasn't feeling very well (I'm better now) and as a result my judgement was slightly impared and I bought a book on Amazon instead of going to bed even earlier than i actually did. The book was called "The Herbal Drugstore" and was only $.01, so in a way it was almost worth it.
Then, on thursday, my friend Lish fell and hurt her knee. So we, both knowing about my recent purchase, decide to try out some of the herbal remedies for bruising on her knees. As we're reading through the possibilities, we decided to try potatoes on her right knee, which she bruised while playing broomball, and cayenne pepper on her left knee, which she had hurt earlier that evening.
So we cut up a potato and put the cold raw slices on her propped up knee. Then we tried to figure out what to do with the cayenne pepper. So after quickly scanning the cayenne paragraph, we took some peach lotion from the kitchen and used it to keep the cayenne pepper on her knee. Then we got some plastic gloves (so she wouldnt have to get up to wash the pepper off her hands) and she massaged it into her knee.
All was fine initially.
Then, as the night went on, her knee started getting hotter and hotter until the pain from her knee was completely drowned out by the pain on her skin. After about 30-45 minutes with the cayenne on her knee, she finally turns to me and asks "so how long are we supposed to have this on here?". That was when we went back and read the directions thoroughly. Unfortunately, we had missed a few crutial sentances the first time. Apparently, we were supposed to use a comercial cream or ointment that had cayenne in it. not just straight cayenne. We were also supposed to use it only according to the manufacturers instructions, and since our version's manufacturer (God) didn't write any instructions concerning cayenne pepper in the Bible, we decided to wash it off as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately, this didn't take away the burning effect. So, remembering that the cold potato made her skin feel cool, we sliced up the rest of the potato and slapped it on her left knee. It didn't really help.
Snow didn't help. A hot shower really didn't help. Sleep didn't help.
The only thing that eventually helped was time. Now it just feels like she's missing a layer of skin.
But, the way I see it, even if we had had some cayenne ointment, the active ingredient would still have been the cayenne pepper. And, people pay a ton of money for microdermabrasion.
 So, the way I see it, I really just gave her a ton of active ingredient and saved her a ton of money. Plus, we were laughing basically the entire time, and laughter is one of the best medicines out there.


she's not laughing, she's biting her arm to keep from screaming in pain.



Fortunately, Lish is a trouper.