I finally broke down and made a trip to the grocery store — picked up some Kleenex with lotion & Vitamin E, several types of chicken soup (Campbell’s Simply Home, Progresso Homestyle Chicken and Campbell’s Soup to Go for use at the office tomorrow), generic Safeway-brand “Cold & Sinus” caplets, Robitussin Vitamin C drops (I thought they were also cough drops when I bought them) and Tropicana orange juice with double Vitamin C. If I were a practitioner of amaroli I could now produce my own 100% RDA of Vitamin C — in addition to all the practice’s other dubious remedies . . .

I’m starting to feel a little better. Go figure — taking care of yourself can actually work.