View from my bed

I am, as my grandfather would say, “sick as a damn dog.” Flat out. Fatigue, head full of snot, coughing, sneezing, headache, throat full of razor blades, nausea. Blotto. 

I bless the sweet intentions of friends who, with good hearts, advise me what to do to cure myself of whatever virus or bug this is. 

One friend urges me to spend twenty minutes seconds tapping my sternum “to reboot your immune system.” She sent me a video made by a chiropractor. I googled it and found a statement on Quora from someone who says he has a PhD in Life Sciences from the University of Dundee: “No. At the very least this is unsupported by any evidence, but it also bears so many of the hallmarks of pseudoscience that you really should be more inclined to believe it doesn’t work than that it does.This is part of a pseudoscience usually referred to as tapping .… From a scientific point of view, I’m also left with a lot of pointed questions. Why, for example, would you expect that physically agitating the lymphocytes in your immune system would somehow wake them up or activate them in any positive way, as opposed to stressing them out and making them die or misbehave?”

But that led me to an experiment that I now recommend to anyone else who finds themselves useless for any good purpose. A few Christmases ago, my son-the-sound-man gave me a Bose micro-speaker that makes the tinny sounds coming from my phone or laptop sound round, resonant and full. Today I asked Apple Music to play Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic playing Holst’s The Planets, and I put the mini-speaker on my sternum and let it blare into my chest. It was splendid. My sternum and rib cage vibrated to the percussion, and it did cause my sinuses to drain even more, so I think it was beneficial. The choice of music is of course up to you, but I experimented with Chopin Etudes and did not find them as effective as Holst’s tympani. A matter of vibrational energy, I think, rather than taste.

I should probably follow Melisseus in saying thank you for the good wishes, though I'm not well enough to be on a screen right now. However I wonder if anyone else has found chest-music beneficial, so I've left them on, but don't feel obliged to comment. Blessings to you all. Stay well. Vibrate your chests with thunderous music if you're into it.