Amalgam of select grandmotherly advice for general health

I'm not going to drink my pee.

Three movies, one and a half novels, an entire clove of garlic, a full tablespoon of cayenne pepper, a teaspoon of ginger, honey, five zinc lozenges, one vitamin C tablet, several litres of water, one litre of pure cranberry juice, chicken soup, two ibuprofen, all-day bed rest, and a steamy hot Epsom salt bath later, and I am finally functional again. This hodge-podge recipe for health, inherited in bits and kisses from a thousand grandmothers, contains all known elements that might purge my clammy, pale, virus farm of a body of this nasty seasonal flu.

I didn't even cheat. No vitamin-sucking coffee or black tea, and certainly none of those delicious minty chocolates my mother sent me, no matter how much I wanted my mom at my bedside, would tempt me to risk my sure-to-be speedy recovery.

Still, I knew I was missing a key element, a little TLC. Halfway through the day, I stopped ignoring my phone in hopes that a friend would give me the sympathy I so craved. Relieved to hear the loving voice of a best friend on the other end, I let loose with my whining for only a minute or two, and sweetly, she listened. Then, with a lilt in her voice she suggested I drink my pee. Some people's grandmothers somewhere have been recommending the practice as a cure for eons, and if it was good enough for Gandhi...