Monday, August 17, 2009

Strep can turn into what???

We've had quite an eventful few days. Thursday night Chase was not feeling well at all and called into work sick. By the next day he looked at me and said he was going to go to an urgent care doctor to get his throat looked at. Side Note: My husband doesn't go to doctors! Seriously, he has only been to a doc 1 other time in our 3 1/2 years of marriage...and that was a couple months ago with his staph infection. So when he told me he needed to see a doctor I knew he really wasn't feeling well.

They put him on an antibiotic and said it was strep. Great. Strep goes away pretty quickly with an antibiotic...or so we thought. Saturday morning, well really the middle of the night, he woke up in horrible pain. I look a look at his throat and said he should probably go to the ER. It was bad! I had never seen anything like it before! This was no longer Strep.

He went to a local ER who tested him for Strep and Mono, both came back negative. They didn't let him see the ER doctor and gave him another antibiotic and sent him home. Ugh! No answers.

So let's fast forward to this morning. He had been running a high fever for 4 days straight now. He woke up and said it was now effecting his breathing. I take a look at it and what do I see? I giant white puss pocket that is taking over half of his throat!!! I wish I was exaggerating. This time I take him to a different ER which was a good move. After the ER doc looked at it, he immediately called an ENT doc. Dr. S, the ENT doc, said it was on the verge of becoming an abscess. The only way to get rid of an abscess is surgery. He immediately placed hubby on a really strong antibiotic through the IV. He said if it doesn't get better or gets worse by tomorrow morning, he'll have to come in and do surgery.

His fever has broke, praise the Lord!, and he is feeling a lot better. The bulging puss pocket seems to be getting small, but definitely still there. We are praying we can avoid surgery! On our way out of the hospital this morning, they said this is really serious. If it gets to the point that it did this morning, don't bother driving him to the ER, just call an ambulance. This makes me even more frustrated with the first ER he went to as they would not let him see the ER doctor. If only we were into sewing....but we aren't. I'm just glad we went back in for a second opinion.

The moral of the story is: if you have a sore throat and think it may be strep, seek medical attention immediatly. If it goes untreated too long, it can develope into a deep infection that is called a really long word that I can't pronouce...this can then turn into an abscess which is really painful (so I hear) and will result in immidiate surgery. Oh, did I mention that you can also have perminent kidney damage? Minor side effect.

2 comments:

Ashley said...

Holy cow! That is insane! I will be praying for you guys. That is no fun.

-ashley

Anonymous said...

hi, found your page while on bedrest w/ strep. this is the worst strep i've had and i've had it a lot. scary stuff for you guys. thanks for the info.