Hello, and come in. I'm Jo. I am 71 years old, and I spent thirty-four years as a registered nurse, most of them on a medical floor and the last nine in a pediatrician's office. I have a grandson who set this page up for me over Labor Day weekend and showed me how to type into it, so if something looks funny, blame him.

People have been calling me about their sniffles for fifty years. My neighbors, my church, my daughters, my daughters' friends. The questions are always the same and so are the answers, so I decided to write them down once and for all.

Now read this part carefully, because I mean it: What is on this page is common sense, not medicine. I am a retired nurse, not your doctor, and I have never laid eyes on you. Nothing here takes the place of a phone call to your own doctor's office. If you are worried, call your doctor. That is what they are there for, and any doctor worth his salt would rather get a call about nothing than miss something.

A cold is a virus. There is no pill that cures it, and antibiotics do nothing for it, so please don't go pestering your doctor for a prescription you don't need. A cold takes about a week to ten days to run its course whether you fuss over it or not. What you can do is make yourself comfortable while your body does the work.

1. Rest. I mean it. Go to bed. The dishes will keep. If you go to work with a cold you'll take twice as long to get over it and you'll give it to everybody in the office besides.
2. Fluids. Water, juice, weak tea, broth. Keep a glass by the bed and keep sipping. If your lips are dry and you haven't been to the bathroom in a while, you're not drinking enough.
3. Warmth. A sweater, a blanket, a warm bath. Not to sweat it out (that's an old wives' tale, and I'm an old wife, so I can say so), just to be comfortable.
4. A good night's sleep. Prop your head up on an extra pillow so you can breathe. A humidifier helps here too, see below.

Store-bought cold medicine can make you more comfortable, but read the label and follow it, don't double up on two different products that have the same thing in them, and ask the pharmacist if you take other medicine or have high blood pressure. Pharmacists are wonderful and nobody asks them anything.

Yes, it really does help, and I don't care what anybody says. It's warm, it's salty, it's fluid, the steam opens up your nose, and somebody made it for you, which counts for more than people think. Here is how I make mine. Nothing fancy.

• One whole chicken, or a few pounds of thighs and legs. Cover with cold water in a big pot, bring it up to a boil, and skim the foam off the top.
• Add two or three carrots, two or three ribs of celery, a whole onion cut in half, a couple of cloves of garlic, a bay leaf, a good pinch of salt and some peppercorns.
• Turn it down to a simmer and leave it alone for an hour and a half or two hours.
• Take the chicken out, let it cool enough to handle, pull the meat off the bones and put the meat back in. Throw out the bones and the bay leaf. Taste it for salt.
• Egg noodles or rice if you want them. Cook them in the soup for the last ten minutes.

Make a big pot and freeze it in the little plastic tubs so it's ready the next time somebody gets sick. You will not feel like cooking when you have a cold. Nobody does.

Salt water gargle. Stir about half a teaspoon of ordinary table salt into a glass of warm water (eight ounces or so). Gargle, spit, repeat, a few times a day. It tastes like the ocean and it's the best thing there is for a scratchy throat. Don't swallow it. Little children can't gargle, so don't try to make them.

Honey in tea. A spoonful of honey stirred into warm tea, or warm water with a squeeze of lemon, soothes a cough and a raw throat, especially at bedtime. My mother did this and her mother did too.

Cough drops and hard candy keep the throat moist. Same warning: nothing a small child could choke on.

A word about aspirin. Don't give aspirin to children or teenagers who have a fever or a flu-like illness unless the doctor tells you to. Ask the doctor or the pharmacist what is right for your child's age and weight, and measure it properly with the little cup, not a kitchen spoon.

Once the furnace comes on in the fall, the air in the house gets dry as a bone, and dry air makes a stuffy nose and a cough feel worse. A cool-mist humidifier in the bedroom overnight makes a real difference. I say cool mist because a hot steam vaporizer can scald a child (or a grown-up) who knocks it over, and I've seen it happen.

Clean it. Every day. Empty it, rinse it, dry it, fill it fresh. A humidifier that sits with old water in it grows things you do not want to breathe. Once a week give it a good scrub the way the instructions say. If you can't be bothered to clean it, don't use it, and I mean that kindly.

If you don't have one, a hot shower with the bathroom door shut and sitting in the steam for ten minutes does much the same job.

This is the most important part of the page. Most colds get better on their own. These do not wait. Call the doctor's office, and if you can't reach them, go to the emergency room:

• A fever over 103 degrees, or any fever that keeps going for more than a few days, or a fever that goes away and then comes back.
• Trouble breathing. Working hard to breathe, wheezing, breathing fast, a bluish color around the lips. Do not wait on this one. Go.
• A stiff neck with a fever or a headache, especially if the light hurts the eyes or there is a rash. Go right away.
• Anything at all in a baby. If a baby under three months has a fever, that is a phone call to the doctor tonight, not in the morning. A baby who won't eat, won't wake up properly, or has fewer wet diapers than usual needs to be seen.
• An earache that keeps a child up at night, a sore throat with white patches or that lasts more than a couple of days, a cough that goes on for weeks or brings up anything colored or bloody.
• Anyone elderly, pregnant, or with a heart or lung condition, diabetes, or a weak immune system who comes down with a bad cold or flu. Don't tough it out. Call.
• Your own gut. If you have a feeling something is wrong, it usually is. Call. Nobody at the doctor's office is going to scold you for calling.

It's the end of September, which means flu shot season starts in October. The shot takes a couple of weeks to do its work and flu usually gets going around the holidays, so October and November are the time to get it. Everybody over 65 should have one every year, and so should anybody with heart or lung trouble or diabetes, and anybody who takes care of such a person. Ask your doctor, the pharmacy, or the county health department where they're giving them this year. I'm getting mine the first week of October and I'll be nagging my neighbors to do the same.

No, the flu shot does not give you the flu. I have been hearing that one since 1960.

If you only remember one thing from this whole page, let it be this. Colds are passed along by hands more than anything else. Soap, warm water, rub them together properly front and back and between the fingers, count to twenty, rinse, and dry. Before you eat, after the bathroom, after you blow your nose, and when you come in from the store. Teach the children. Teach the husband, if it comes to that.

Cover your cough with a tissue and throw the tissue away, don't stuff it up your sleeve. Don't share cups. And stay home when you're sick. I know I said that already. I'll say it again.

Coming when I get around to it: my thoughts on the upset stomach, poison ivy, and the bee sting. My grandson says I should also put up the recipe for my rice pudding, which cures nothing but is very good.

Other pages you might like here on GeoCities.us: Riverbend Yoga & Stretch is right here in the neighborhood and has a seniors' class that I keep meaning to try. Science at Home is fun for the grandchildren. And Rosa's Kitchen Table has real cooking on it.