Though my experience has been almost entirely anecdotal, I’ve become a true believer. The stuff works for me. I look around only for corroborating evidence. And guess what? I find it.
I loved the oils so much that I began to take them for granted. Most kids are hopped up on antibiotics, anti-viral meds, anti-fungal, anti-acne meds, I told myself. Not mine. Introduced to the essential oils by my mother and her professional friends, I accepted. How could they hurt?
I began putting on lemongrass oil on myself during Little-League baseball to keep the bugs at bay. They went nowhere near me.
Sad to say, they did go near my kids and my kids’ best friends, many of whom had intense reactions to bug bites. “Basil,” my mom said. “It takes the itch away and helps heal the bite.”
My friends used my oils. It worked. “My son was intensely allergic to mosquito bites and poison ivy, and the basil oil was magic,” testified Jane Fallon of Hyde Park. Basil oil calmed the swelling, the itch. “Even though I felt like I was cooking the entire week, the smell was well worth it.”
I was instructed by my mother to place Thieves on the feet of my kids every night, to have them breathe it in, one nostril at a time. The potent smell became a source of comfort in our house. The kids began to expect it, ask for it.
One day three months later, I ran out of the stuff. Three months went by. My kids would ask for the oils. I told them that the order was on the way. It became a ritual or them to ask before they went to sleep.
While I was waiting for that order to come from an organic farm in Oregon, our oldest son, always vibrant and without illness, became sick, very sick. Bronchitis was the first diagnosis. He fought through it. I regretfully did not respond to his months of low-grade fevers, aches, pains and other symptoms. Finally, he was diagnosed with severe mononucleosis.
