Anyone have experience with recurrent strep throat?

[therighttime]

My son is 8 years old and had never had strep until last year. However, this school year he had it 7 times. TODAY actually he had the 7th positive strep test. I asked the doctor if we needed to get his tonsils out and at that point she made him an ENT appointment. I''m a little surprised she didn''t bring it up herself before now. Do you think they will take his tonsils out? Will this help? What else can be done? He has missed at least 2 days of school each time he has strep this year.


Thanks for any insight...

 

[poptart]

I have a friend who is in college now and still gets it at least twice a year. She''s had that ever since she was in grade school. They took her tonsils out, but she still gets strep. She just got over it last week, actually.

*M*

 

[San Diego Bride]

he''s probably a strep carrier, meaning that streptococcus lives in his throat. it doesn''t mean that every sore throat is an infection per se, but it does mean that he will continue to test positive. i''m not totally sure about taking his tonsils out since the strep may live in his throat anyway, but i''m definitely not up to speed on recurrent strep. an ent appointment is definitely a good idea. you could also get him tested for strep when he feels well and this could tell you if he carries it all the time.

a random question.... do you by chance have a dog? as strange as it may sound i treated a little boy once who just kept getting strep throat. we just couldn''t get rid of it. then we sent the dog to the vet. it turns out the dog was a carrier. the vet treated the dog and the boy stopped getting it. dogs lick so much that it''s easy to spread. i know it''s random, but i thought it was worth asking.

i hope you get this under control.

 

[Kaleigh]

As a child I had it a lot, sometimes twice a month. I finally had my tonsils out at 13. It was very painful, but when they took them out my strep infections stopped.

My daughter is in college, and she had it twice in the same month. Both times she tested positive and was on strong antibiotics. She never had tested positive before now. But luckily the last round of antibiotics worked, and she is fine.

 

[diamondfan]

My five year old had it 6 times one winter, and having had it 4 or 5 times the year prior, our allergist felt it was time to take the tonsils and adenoids out, which I did, and he has been strep free since. I had heard about the carrier issue, but not sure what it means in terms of treatment, since it would be chronic and not accute at that point. I also had my oldest and youngest re test positive right after treatment because the antibiotic failed to treat both of them. My oldest and youngest would get it all the time and my middle never did. I also had it twice one winter, it sucks. You need to get rid of their toothbrush a few days into treatment, and I sometimes get rid of that one as well, at the end of the antibiotics treatment and get ANOTHER fresh one. Pain in the butt but necessary.

 

[therighttime]

Thanks for the replies! I don''t think he is a strep carrier since he had a sore throat a few months ago and tested negative for strep. I can pretty much tell when he is getting strep though because he gets a high fever fast, is sick at his stomach, then comes the sore throat. My mom thought I might be a carrier and giving it to him constantly, but I was tested last time I was at the doctor''s office and the test was negative.

I do throw out the toothbrush every time too. He wanted one of those singing toothbrushes but since we throw them out so often I had to tell him no on that.

Oh, and yes we do have a dog!!! Interesting to consider that....

 

[crown1]

this seems pretty elementary but does he put things in his mouth? sometimes kids have a habit of doing this and he could be infecting himself this way. do you carefully give the medication the way it is supposed to be given? i ask this as my sister never would believe that when they said one hour before you eat or two hours after that you really need to do this. i know not all medicine requires this but she would just do as she thought best and wonder why things turned out as they did. i would also ask at the school about other students having it. i hope he gets well soon!

 

[AGBF]

Before doing surgery find out if anyone in the house might be the carrier. Or even a friend he sees outside the house! My cousin kept getting it and it turned out that her son, who was a child at the time, was a carrier although he never got sick from it. Once he was treated, her constant strep throats were brought under control.

Deb

 

[Ellen]

I battled it from the time I was little until 13. At that point, the specialist said if I got it one more time, he''d take my tonsils out. I got it again, and he said no.

WHY my mother didn''t go to someone else, I don''t know. However, I never got it again. So, maybe the doc really thought I''d grow out of it, and I did.


My youngest never had it, until he went to a new school in 6th grade. For 3 years he got it constantly. We were all tested, negative. He left that school and that was the end of it. So of course I''m convinced it was someone/something there, but we''ll never know.

One thing that was suggested was to put him on an antihistamine in early fall. He would always start out with head congestion, and then it would go into strep. We did that the last year before he left, and it definitely helped.

 

[AGBF]

Date: 4/29/2007 3:10:24 PM
Author: Ellen
My youngest never had it, until he went to a new school in 6th grade. For 3 years he got it constantly. We were all tested, negative. He left that school and that was the end of it. So of course I''m convinced it was someone/something there, but we''ll never know.

I had the sense that strep was being passed around at my daughter''s elementary school once, but couldn''t prove it. It just seemed likely that when one child was cured another one got ill...and so forth. There was just too much of it at once.


Deborah

 

[ephemery1]

I had strep throat about once a month for most of my adolescence/college years... doctors kept telling me I needed to get my tonsils out, but I kept putting it off... until in college my tonsils starting swelling to the point that they closed my throat and I kept having to go to the ER for steroids just to breathe!!

I finally decided to get them out during a summer break when I was 24... the doctor warned me that a tonsillectomy is one of the most painful procedures an adult can undergo (more than back surgery, giving birth, etc) and that most people need to take between 3-4 weeks off of work to recover. I scoffed and assumed they were all just whiny... until a month later when I was weak and emaciated and living on round-the-clock pain meds, barely out of bed!!

So if your son is really having a lot of trouble, I would definitely recommend he get them out sooner than later... for a child, the recovery process is usually just a few days. And for what it's worth, I've had them out for 3 years now, and haven't had a single sore throat since then... one of the best decisions I ever made!!

ETA -- I should probably add that I was a somewhat extreme case... my ENT doc told me after my surgery that even the most experienced nurses in the O.R. had to take a step back when they saw my gross, disease-ridden tonsils.... his description REALLY didn't help with the post-surgery nausea!!