All year, I work to try to avoid this very thing – getting sick. And I’m not talking cough, sniffle, sneeze sick, I’m talking shivers, trouble swallowing, ear aching, nose won’t stop running even though you blew it dry, sick.  Let me tell you, it sucks.

I felt it coming on late Monday, after I spent my whole day (starting at 6:45am) on site at a client conference.  Then, bam! Tuesday morning I woke up with half a sore throat, an aching ear and an inability to swallow anything with a consistency more solid than mashed potatoes.

Blame it on the change in weather – which by the way, is amazing at the moment but I can’t enjoy it because I’m home, sick as a dog, working while laying on the couch with the TV off. What frustrates me is that I can’t do anything about it. After seeing my doctor. Pure luck that I scheduled an appointment for yesterday. She broke the news to me. “It looks like you have a virus.” Dum dum dum. My world came crashing down. A virus? How in the world did that happen? I wash my hands, eat well, make sure I stay away from sick people, and yet … I have been diagnosed by the professional. The only good news is that she put me on a Z-Pak, a five-day antibiotic treatment whose powers are so great that hopefully it will have me feeling better before the long weekend rolls around.

Between email and projects, I’ve managed to create a giant pile of Kleenex and also make myself some really easy chicken noodle soup.

Why chicken noodle soup? You might ask. Well, a handful of scientific studies show that chicken soup really could have medicinal value. A study published in 2000 in the medical journal Chest by Dr. Stephen Rennard of the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha found that chicken noodle soup helps reduce upper respiratory cold symptoms by inhibiting the migration neutrophils, infection-fighting cells.

Dr. Rennard conducted lab tests to determine why chicken soup might help colds, starting with his wife’s homemade recipe. The recipe was handed down by her Lithuanian grandmother. Using blood samples from volunteers, he showed that the soup inhibited the movement of neutrophils, the most common type of white blood cell that defends against infection.  To find out more about Dr. Rennard’s findings, visit http://www.unmc.edu/chickensoup/index.htm

So here’s my chicken noodle soup recipe. Mostly made of food I had in my fridge (not much really).

 

 

Chicken Noodle Soup Recipe

Ingredients

2 Chicken Breasts
2 large Carrots
1 Medium Onion, chopped
2 Red Potatoes, chopped
1 box Low Sodium Chicken Broth
1  ½ cups Thin Spaghetti, broken in half
Olive Oil
Salt to taste
Oregano to taste
 
 

Directions

Boil chicken breasts for 20 minutes, drain water.
Cut chicken into small squares, or shreds
Sauté onion with 1 tablespoon (I used 2 swirls) olive oil until translucent
Add carrots and potatoes, sauté for 2 minutes.
Add chicken broth
Add noodles
Add chicken
Stir carefully as not to break the noodles.
Let boil once it boils, add salt and oregano to taste
Allow the soup to continue boiling on low-medium for another 20 minutes.
 

Serve with a box of Kleenex and a warm blanket.