Hey Reader,

“psst….mom. My ear hurts.” My 13-year-old daughter whispers in the middle of church. I give her my best mom glare and whisper-shout, “What?!”

I'm thinking, really, kid, this is the time you pick to tell me, and how bad could it possibly hurt all of a sudden?!

Upon looking at her earlobe, I discovered that she had a pus-filled cesspool-looking bump behind her earlobe.

It immediately screamed infection, infection, infection to me.

The first order of business was some serious disinfecting. We soaked a cotton ball in hydrogen peroxide, and with the slightest bit of pressure, a pus geyser erupted. 🌋🌋

Now, as a weirdo who likes popping zits and who watches cadaver dissections to learn about the body, I was fascinated by how much pus came out of a seemingly small bump.

My daughter, on the other hand, was horrified.

For as small as this bump appeared at first, A LOT of pus came out.

It continued to drain throughout Sunday. We continued disinfecting with hydrogen peroxide and also used a hypertonic Epsom salt soak with antibacterial herbs like echinacea, garlic, and Oregon Grape root.

A hypertonic Epsom salt solution helps pull fluid from a wound and decreases swelling and pain.

And garlic, echinacea, and Oregon grape root are some of my favorite antimicrobial herbs. Echinacea also has immune-stimulating properties, which supports the immune system in handling infections. These are herbs that I keep on hand in my herbal first-aid kit​

After 12 hours we finally got it to stop draining pus and oozing. We used some antibiotic ointment on it and bandaged it up. We also used tea tree oil as well for its antibacterial properties.

We’ve been keeping a close eye on it the last few days and it’s all but cleared up now. She hasn’t had any pain, swelling, or any other signs of infection and her new piercing doesn’t look like it’s been affected.

Reflecting on this experience brought to mind some important lessons about managing health at home:

#1 It’s important to consider WHO you’re developing your herbal protocol for. In this case, the WHO was my 13-year-old daughter, who has some tolerance for herbal remedies (thanks to yours truly) but also has a strong opinion of her own and a schedule to consider (she’s gone to school for 8 hours).

In this case, I wanted to make sure that the protocol was easy to follow and something she would be on board with. It’s a bit of a negotiation when formulating a protocol for someone else because if they won’t actually do what you recommend, then even the best protocol is worthless!

**a shout-out to my mentor Joanna Lindenbaum as she always talks about coaching the WHAT based on the WHO and I applied this same concept here.

#2 It’s important to know red flags and what to watch out for when managing health at home. I was reminded of this because while this was a fairly benign infection, infections aren’t something to mess around with. Understanding the anatomy and physiology of the body helped me determine how serious this was and what we’d need to look out for as an indicator that things were going south.

Some ways that I did that in this case was by assessing her posterior auricular (behind the ear) and preauricular (in front of the ear) lymph nodes to see if they were swollen (which would indicate the infection was spreading.

We also took pictures every 12 hours to monitor the changes because memory is fickle, and having hard evidence of how something is changing is important for monitoring purposes.

I also assessed for systemic signs of infection, such as fever and flu-like symptoms, and monitored for increased pain, which would all be signs that this was more serious and needed a higher level of care.

#3 There’s more than one way to eat an elephant. Meaning that there are a lot of different herbal protocols that we could have used to handle this situation. There’s not one right approach or one way of doing things.

In order to develop an effective protocol, you need to take into account you, the person you’re working with, the herbs you have or can access, and your herbal knowledge.

Then you need to apply critical thinking and assessing skills to know when you might need to change the protocol or when to get additional support.

We could have used any number of different herbs, essential oils, or over the counter pharmaceuticals to handle this situation. And in fact, we used a combo of all three of these things in this particular case.

There’s no right or wrong here.

The end result was that we managed this minor infection at home with confidence.

Every home should have an herbalist with the confidence and skills to help themselves and their families when something comes up.

So that when you hear “Mom, my tummy hurts” or “my throat hurts” or “I can’t sleep” you can jump into action with something that actually helps.

So, I’d love to know, Reader, on a scale of 1-10 (10 being high) how confident are you in using herbs at home to support the health of you and your family?

And, second question, where would you like to be on that scale?

Hit reply and let me know!

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With love and Chamomile,