To ask for your daftest advice

[justcly]

So, I have the flu. It is the actual flu, not a cold with added drama. Apparently, I'm "in a cluster" (no, me neither). Anyway, it started on 27th December, so I am gradually approaching the other side of it, apart from bad catarrh and a still-ropey chest. So earlier in the evening, I had a mad coughing fit and accidentally swallowed my last Hall's Mentholyptus whole. Which was distressing, because they have been the only things keeping me from drowning in my own snot (stick with me, the whole post isn't this disgusting). I rang my mum for a little whinge and she told me to peel an onion and put it under my bed.

I mean, is this a thing, or is my mother nuts? And just to amuse me, what is the daftest advice you have ever received?

Not to bother trying to get into the university of my choice (from my mother) because I wasn't clever enough.

I ignored her advice and got in easily.

That my broken hand (with bone sticking out in 2 places and needed surgery to fix) was just staved and to bung it under the cold tap!

There woman I work with, who has her mortgage paid off years ago and makes 4 times my salary, told me “you should sell your house for a low price! Then you’d have money sooner!”

I do not plan on leaving the area for a far cheaper area so why the hell would I sell for a low price?!

“You’d feel better if you were working.” Doctor to me when I was desperate with chronic, debilitating depression, after years of failing to hold a job down for long due to complete inability to cope.

@Stressedout10

That broken hand advice is the business 🤣
I remember a colleague who had just returned from a holiday abroad feeling rotten, being told by his mother that he just needed a big poo. Turned out he had Legionnaires.

While I was my throat was closing and I had dinner plate sized hives from a bee sting, my husband telling me I was over reacting and should walk to the corner shop for some allergy medicine. Not exactly what the Doctors said when administering the epi pen in hospital.

Feed my DD cucumber and dandelion root as they are diuretcs which would deal with her fluid retention.

She had kidney failure and was on and off dialysis at the time.

The onion thing may have some merit.
I read once how in the olden days people would leave a peeled cut onion in the room of sick people and it would turn black as it absorbs stuff? Hence curing them of whatever they were suffering from!
And that you should never put a cut onion even if wrapped in cling film etc in the fridge as it will a still absorb nasties?!

From a taxi driver when I mentioned that I was learning to drive and not very good. "Never ever look in any of your mirrors, just drive when you want to drive and don't worry about anyone else".

We always have a cut up onion in room when decorating (or when my Mum came and smoked in the house) as it does seem to help absorb paint/smoke smells.

To ‘relax’ and we would get pregnant. We had my trying for 3 years and have Male factor infertility we were never going to conceive without help.

I gave the worst advice I have ever heard to DH.

He woke me up complaining of stomach pains, said he felt really ill. Told him to take 2 paracetamol, have a shower and a cup of tea. An hour later the paramedics were administering gas and air just to get him off the bed. All his stats were through the roof and he nearly passed out getting downstairs.

Turns out he had a perforated bowel, a burst appendix and perotinitus. A week on HDU, massive 6 hour op and 2 weeks in hospital later he was let out on Christmas eve with a couple of drains in still.

If he had just stuck with my advice and not told me to phone an ambulance he would have woken up dead.

While in labour my partner told me to concentrate on having contractions. Apparently I wasn’t concentrating enough, or else my contractions would’ve been closer together and sped up my labour. I still don’t let him forget that amazing advice, I like to remind him frequently.

@justcly
That's not even the best part she made me take a bus to the hospital as " a hand injury does not need an ambulance "
The A&E staff were livid

My Mother told me I should start smoking to help me lose weight!!! Smokers are thinner apparently!

I was 18 and very insecure about my appearance.

Not me but a nurse told my sister to use nail polish remover on her cold sore.

A friend told me to stop overpaying my mortgage because the nest people who buy my house get that money😂.

She a professional with a mortgage of her own.

My husband, who told me if I could move my arm it wasn't broken, just bruised. Two fucking weeks I walked around with a fucking fractured wrist, arm, and elbow before I went for an x-ray.

After my ex suffered severe sunburn and was actually following medical advice, some random told him he should forget about continuing to cool the skin but to have a hot bath and to put a jumper on to keep the heat in the skin.

I guess if he was suffering hypothermia he should have an ice bath...!

To wait and see if I could deliver naturally after the waters had shown clear traces of meconium and a midwife had raised concerns about fetal heartbeat. Glad I shouted at the doctor who suggested that, as even after an emergency CS my son was not in great shape.

An ex (olive skinned probably got skin cancer by now, but I did tell him that the funny shaped mole on his back probably needed checking out) told me (Scots heritage, pale, redhaired, freckled) that the only reason I burned was because I hadn't let the sun get anywhere but my arms and face.

What I needed to do, apparently, was spend a week in Spain with no sunblock whatsoever and I would teach my skin not to burn that way.

I spend ten minutes outside throughout winter at around 2pm every day at the start of my break. Five years ago, I did that and the sun came out for a change. Yep, I burned. In mid January. In ten minutes.

My friend phoned me to tell me that he thought he'd had a stroke. As he lived 5 minutes from the hospital, I told him to call
A taxi. He said "I'll call an ambulance, that's what they are for." They took him
Straight to the acute strike unit at another hospital. I'm a nurse and he hasn't let me live it down.

Not advice as such but a bit of mad science from my (lovely and actually very clever) MIL. After I had DD 'you had a girl because you ate so many strawberries when you were pregnant...' 🤷‍♀️

@ploughingthrough

If only the rest of the world knew!

When we had our first DD my DH’s nan came out with some classics ‘don’t tickle her feet, she’ll get epilepsy’ (I have epilepsy myself- definitely not through tickling!), ‘don’t wake her when she sleeps, it’s the only time they grow’ and ‘she’ll eat what she wants, don’t make her eat anything she doesn’t want, it’ll make her sick’ (when she was refusing everything except chocolate at 2 years old 😂). There were many more but they’re the ones that come to mind 😂