I don't have a ginger press. Is that a common thing to have?

I tried a lot of things like tea with lemon and honey. The only thing that felt good was ice cream or very cold smoothies. And gargling salt-water as often as I could think of it. I ran a humidifier in the bedroom at night. Took two steamy showers a day. Used both Paracetamol and aspirin, and strepsils lozenges with lidocane numbing agent. Even with all that the violent hacking cough (which may have been exacerbated by the holdover cough I had from bronchitis previously at the tail end of when I had RSV about 6 weeks ago) made the pain shine through.

Prednisone hits the inflammation very hard. Amoxicillin hits bacteria very hard especially streptococcus. This is a case where home remedies were not going to cut it.