Strep Throat

I have strep throat. I felt my throat getting sore yesterday evening at about 5pm'ish.

Normally, when I get a sore throat, I have other symptoms like a cough, nasal or post-nasal drip, and often hoarseness. This time, though, things were different. I just got a sore throat.

I also felt very slightly nauseous. And, my stomach ached. You know how it is when you have a stomach ache -- it feels as if you're hungry. Then, you eat and eating doesn't help much. I had a slight fever too.

I don't know if I had a headache or not because the primary pain in my head area is my throat. It's like if you had a small pain covered by a larger pain.

My throat got more and more sore. None of the pain medications even hardly touched the pain. Late last night, I emailed my boss and one of my co-workers and said I suspected I had strep.

Since I've never had strep before, and I've never had these symptoms before, I figured I probably had strep. Sure enough, I made an appointment, they took a throat culture, and the culture was positive for it.

Now, I'm on antibiotics and Darvacet for the pain, but the Darvacet doesn't seem to be doing much. Nothing is. The pain is rather annoying. I feel into a feverish sleep earlier, but now I'm up. I wish I could just sleep until I'm well again.

The doctor said I'd be contagious until 24-hours after my third dose of the antibiotic. Hence, I'm going to stay home from work again tomorrow. I didn't feel much like doing anything all day today.

Whenever I get sick like this, I always think about what would've happened if I'd gotten sick 100-years ago when they didn't have antibiotics. Would I have been bed-ridden for a week or longer? Would I have died?

They didn't even have good fever-reducing medications back then. It's hard to say, but I suspect if we were at the medical technology of 100-years ago, life would be much, much more tragic for us. Sicknesses that are simple to cure now would be devastating then.

I'm thankful I live now.

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One of those things happened today that you never want to have happen. Background info: My mom is on home hemo-dialysis for a genetic kidney disease she has called polycystic kidney disease (or PKD for short). I do *not* have this disease, but two of my sisters do (one other sister does not).

Since my mom's husband, my step-father Ralph, recently hurt his back (and kept doing stupid things to re-injure himself), I was cleaning my mom's dialysis machine (weekly) and setting up her bicarbonate solution (three times a week) -- "doing her water."

Of course, since I have strep, I was going to avoid my mother all day today. I wasn't sure if I had it or not this morning, but she called and I explained I was staying home from work, etc. Someone else would have to do her water tonight (my wife did).

My wife took my mother to Albany today to meet with a friend and have lunch. She wanted to get some house-hold items before the lunch, so she went out to Wal-Mart and picked up some things for the house. While she was away, my mom called:

"I've fallen and can't get up."

I swear, that's exactly what she said, word for word. I'm like, "Are you serious?"

"Yes."

"Is Ralph there?"

"Yes, but his back is still hurt." (NOTE: Ralph is not a big guy, he's 67 years old, and he severely injured his spinal column a couple years back.)

"I'll be right there!"

Now, I live all of 1 to 2 minutes from my mom's house by car -- five minutes or so if you're walking. I got in my car and rushed over there.

So, here I am with strep, not wanting to infect my mother and intending to stay away from her all day, driving over there to pick her up off the floor of her house.

Sure enough, I go there and Ralph had put out a blanket for her to make her comfortable. Apparently, she didn't really fall. She slipped out of her easy-chair when bending over to get some pills she'd dropped. Good. The fall didn't hurt her.

I hate to say it, but my mom's no cream-puff light-weight either. She's heavy, but I'm a big strong guy, and I've been working out lately. I was able to get her off the floor. I'm certain my wife wouldn't have been able to do so.

Kind of interesting how I had to stay home today, of all days, and my mom had to fall today. I'm really glad I was there for her.