Remedies & comfort

Fever

Fever is the immune system working, not the disease itself — the goal of treatment is comfort, not a perfect number. What matters more than the reading: how they look, drink, and respond.

1. Fluids first. Fever burns water; dehydration then makes everything worse. Offer drinks every waking hour — water, ORS, soup, diluted juice.
2. Medicine for comfort: paracetamol per the packet (children: dosed by weight); ibuprofen as an alternative or, for adults, alternated if fever is miserable — with food, and not when dehydrated or kidney-impaired. Never aspirin under 16.
3. Dress for the fever: light clothing, light cover, comfortable room. Shivering means they feel cold — cover lightly until it passes; sweating means overshoot — uncover.
4. Do not: cold-bathe, sponge with cold water, or rub with alcohol — these cause shivering (which raises core temperature) and, with alcohol, poisoning risk. Lukewarm washing for comfort only.
5. Rest, and expect 2–4 days for most viral fevers. Track twice daily in the sickness notebook (temperature, drinks, urine) per caring for the sick.
6. Seek help for: any fever in a baby under 3 months; fever over 40°C unresponsive to medicine; fever with stiff neck, light hurting the eyes, confusion, a rash that doesn't fade under a pressed glass, labored breathing, or fever persisting beyond 3 days without improvement. A child having a brief febrile seizure: protect from injury, recovery position after, and get medical advice — terrifying, usually harmless, always worth checking.

Diarrhea & vomiting

The danger is never the diarrhea itself — it is the water and salt leaving. Rehydration IS the treatment; nearly all diarrhea deaths, anywhere, are dehydration deaths that ORS could have prevented.

1. Start ORS immediately — sachet in clean water, or the home mix: 1 L clean water + 6 level tsp sugar + ½ level tsp salt (details and cautions). After every loose stool: adults a large cup, children half to one cup.
2. Vomiting too? Wait 10 minutes after a vomit, then a spoonful of ORS every 1–2 minutes. Tiny volumes stay down; gulps come back. Patience wins this game.
3. Keep feeding: continue breastfeeding infants through everything; others eat small plain meals as tolerated (rice, bread, banana, soup) — food shortens the illness. Skip fried, very sweet, and dairy-heavy food for a few days.
4. Zinc for children (if you have it, per packet, ~10–14 days) shortens episodes — worth keeping in the cabinet.
5. Loperamide is an adults-only comfort tool for travel necessity — never with fever or blood in stool, never for children.
6. Contain it: vomiting-and-diarrhea illness is ferociously contagious — sick person out of the kitchen entirely, own toilet if possible, bleach protocol on accidents, everyone washing hands like surgeons (sickroom rules).
7. Seek help for: blood in stool, high fever with diarrhea, signs of real dehydration (list), nothing staying down 12+ hours, a listless dry-eyed infant, or several household members struck at once with watery diarrhea (suspect the water supply — reboil/re-chlorinate everything, see the waterborne alarm).

Colds, coughs & sore throats

Viral, self-limiting, and unimpressed by antibiotics. Honest medicine here is comfort care while the body wins — and the comfort measures below are the ones with actual evidence.

• Fluids and rest — the boring champions. Warm drinks (tea, soup, water with lemon) genuinely soothe throat and cough.
• Honey is a proven cough soother — a spoonful straight or in warm water, as effective as most syrups. Never for babies under 1 year (infant botulism risk).
• Salt-water gargle for sore throat: ½ tsp salt in a cup of warm water, gargle and spit, several times daily. Old, cheap, works.
• Saline for blocked noses: drops or spray (or homemade: ¼ tsp salt in a cup of cooled boiled water) — especially for babies before feeds, with a bulb suction if you have one. Steam inhalation helps adults feel clearer: a steamy bathroom is the safe version; hot-bowl steaming risks scalds with children around.
• Paracetamol/ibuprofen for the aches, fever, and throat pain, per the packet.
• Skip: antibiotics (useless for viruses — save them for when a doctor prescribes them), and cough/cold syrups for children under 6 (no benefit, real side effects). Vapor rubs: fine from age 2+ on chest and back, never under the nose.
• Expect: a week, give or take; a cough's tail can last 2–3 weeks. Mask + hand hygiene keeps it from touring the family shelter.
• See help for: labored or fast breathing, wheeze with distress, chest pain, coughing blood, ear pain with fever in a child that isn't settling, sore throat with drooling or inability to swallow, symptoms sharply worsening after initial improvement, or a cough beyond 3 weeks.

Aches, headaches & skin complaints

• Headache: most crisis headaches are dehydration, heat, missed meals, missed caffeine, and tension — water, food, shade, and paracetamol solve them. Red flags (sudden worst-ever, with stiff neck/fever/confusion, after a head knock) → evacuate list.
• Back and muscle pain (everyone, after hauling water and sleeping on floors): keep gently moving — bed rest beyond a day stiffens it worse — warmth on the muscle, paracetamol or ibuprofen, and lift with legs thereafter. Numb leg, loss of bladder control, or fever with back pain → medical help.
• Sprains and strains: RICE — see fractures & sprains.
• Prickly heat / heat rash (the crisis-in-summer classic): cool washes, pat dry, loose cotton, time in the coolest room; calamine if you have it. Avoid heavy creams that block sweat further.
• Sunburn: cool showers, moisturizer or aloe, ibuprofen early, hydrate, shade until healed. Blisters = a real burn: see burns.
• Insect bites/stings: scrape out a bee sting sideways, wash, cold pack, antihistamine and hydrocortisone 1% for the itch. Spreading redness after a day, or any breathing/face-swelling reaction → anaphylaxis response.
• Dry cracked skin and lips from heat, wind, and constant handwashing: any plain moisturizer or petroleum jelly, especially overnight — cracked skin is broken armor against infection, worth maintaining like equipment.

Stress & panic — first aid for the mind

Fear in a crisis is not weakness; it is the correct alarm system, sometimes stuck on. You can unstick it. These techniques are the psychological equivalent of pressure on a wound — simple, physical, and they work while you do them.

Panic right now — yours or someone else's

1. Breathe out longer than in. In through the nose for 4 counts, out slowly through pursed lips for 6–8. Ten rounds. The long exhale is a hardware switch on the body's alarm — this is the fastest reliable tool there is.
2. Ground through the senses (5-4-3-2-1): name aloud 5 things you see, 4 you can touch, 3 you hear, 2 you smell, 1 you taste. It drags the mind out of the imagined future into the survivable present.
3. Cold water on the face and wrists, if available — another physical downshift.
4. For someone else: get level with them, calm low voice, their name: "Look at me. You're safe in this room. Breathe with me — out slow." Breathe visibly with them; don't argue with the fear, pace it downward. Panic attacks feel like dying and pass in minutes; say so, kindly.
5. Then give the body a job: fetch water, hold the torch, count supplies. Purposeful hands are the enemy of spiraling minds.

Sustained stress — the long crisis

• Routine is the treatment: fixed waking, meals, work blocks, prayer/reflection, and lights-out. Structure tells the nervous system the world still has edges.
• Ration the news — the checked-schedule habit from the information rules is mental hygiene as much as information hygiene. Rumination with a phone in hand is the crisis's second illness.
• Move daily: walking, stretching, any exercise the situation allows — the body metabolizes stress chemistry through movement, and nothing else clears it as well.
• Talk nightly: ten minutes as adults — what happened, what's tomorrow, one thing that went right. Naming fears shrinks them; carrying them silently grows them.
• Watch each other for the serious signs — weeks of not sleeping, numbness or hopelessness, startling violently, unable to function, thoughts of self-harm — and treat them as the real injuries they are: reduce that person's load, keep them close and occupied, and get professional help when reachable. Strong feelings for weeks after danger are normal recovery; feelings that worsen or paralyze deserve care.

Keeping children calm

Children read danger primarily off their adults, not off events. A composed parent, honest and warm, is the most powerful child-protection tool in any crisis. Composed is a performance you are allowed to give.

1. Tell the truth, sized to the child: "There was an earthquake. It broke some things and that was scary. We're together and we know what to do." Lies and silence leave children alone with worse imaginings; details beyond their years overload them. Answer what is asked, simply, as often as it's asked.
2. Repetition is reassurance: expect the same questions daily. The calm, boring, identical answer is exactly the medicine.
3. Keep the rituals: mealtimes, the bedtime story, the same songs and prayers — held stubbornly even in a shelter. Routine tells a child's body the world still works.
4. Give jobs, not just protection: torch-keeper, water-counter, the one who feeds the cat. Contribution converts helplessness into pride, at every age.
5. Play is processing, not frivolity: make room for it daily. Children replay events in games and drawings — earthquakes, sirens — and this is healthy digestion, not damage. Join sometimes; let the game end happily if they steer it there.
6. Shield the inputs: no rolling disaster footage or adult crisis talk with children in earshot — including from your own phone beside them. They absorb every tone. Adults debrief after bedtime.
7. Expect regression: clinginess, bedwetting, baby talk, tantrums, night waking. It is normal fear-language, not misbehavior — respond with extra warmth and unchanged routines, never punishment. It fades as safety returns.
8. Physical closeness works: more carrying, more lap, more holding hands, sleeping close in disrupted times. Touch is regulation a child's nervous system understands without words.
9. Teach the family plan as competence, not fear: drills as games, the memorized phone number as a badge of being big, the whistle and the meeting point as "what smart families do." Prepared children are measurably calmer children.
10. Get help if weeks pass and a child remains withdrawn, unable to play, sleepless with nightmares, or stuck in fear — the same rule as for adults: lingering, worsening reactions deserve professional care when it's reachable.

Sleep & morale — the quiet supplies

• Guard sleep like water. Judgment, immunity, and temper all fail from its lack. Keep bedtimes fixed; in danger periods, adults alternate watch so the off-adult truly sleeps; screens down an hour before bed (the news will still be there); the 4-in/6-out breathing works on pillows too.
• Caffeine discipline: it borrows alertness from tomorrow. Morning yes; after mid-afternoon it steals the sleep you need most.
• Eat and drink on schedule even without appetite — low blood sugar reads as anxiety and short tempers. The stored tea, coffee, and sweet things exist exactly for morale; use them ceremonially: the daily coffee at the same hour is an anchor, not a luxury.
• Small pleasures are equipment: the deck of cards in the go-bag, the book, the shared music, the football in the yard between aftershocks. Families that laugh during crises are not in denial; they are winning.
• Mark the days: keep the calendar, celebrate the birthdays that fall mid-crisis, note "one week we've managed" out loud. Time with shape is hope with evidence.