Strep Throat - Confusing Recovery

I am feeling the same way and going threw the same things i been praying  an i been crying idk wen imma get better.  I been taking two  cefprozil 250 mg tablet a day and it helping a lil but still feel like something is stuck in my throat  i been feeling like dis for a while now an my ears stop up and my nose keep running  i been gargling salt water and all and still feeling like something in my throat idk what to do and im only 15

UPDATE 6/14/18

Hey everyone. As you all know I have been documenting my experience as much as I can to better help those struggling with the same huge issue I've gone through. It is with deep deep sadness I am writing to report today that my infection is back.

Back in April I caught a viral infection (cold) which lasted about a week. I had sore throat, exhaustion, stuffy nose, etc. The cold went away but guess what didn't? The feeling something was stuck in my throat. It never has reached the point it got to last year when it was horrible. But for the past two months I've been dealing with it on and off. I saw my primary care doctor before my vacation to Las Vegas in mid May. I told him I feel like something is in my throat yadda yadda. He looked and said everything looks good to him but put me on 875mg Amoxicillin just in case it was there. I am so scared to take antibiotics anymore so I gave it a couple days before I cracked and took the Amoxicillin. He put me on a 10 day course but I hate antibiotics now and this dose was huge so I took it for 7 days. 

My trip went okay, it didn't bother me enough to make me worry. Flash forward to last week. It is starting to annoy me again. My husband now has strep throat which he never got even when it was really bad for me. I had a weird symptom of a UTI (just burning sensation when I pee) so I bought a home test for UTI. The two part test came out positive for the leukocytes, which is a white blood cell count. Which means I have an infection somewhere. I took a week's worth of Keflex I had left over from an acne treatment in March. Took the UTI test again this morning after my last antibiotic..... still coming out positive even though I have no UTI symptoms. Confirming my body is still trying to fight off an infection which can only be my throat.

I made an appointment with the ENT. I am going to call my primary to see if I can get more antibiotics until my appointment because it's going to be 5 days until I can see the specialist. This all seems like a reoccuring nightmare. I am so disappointed because I wanted to be a ray of hope for you all who are reading this. I'm not going to give up. I broke down this morning crying after the UTI test because I don't want to go through with this again. But I also just want answers on why this keeps happening to me. I've gotten through it before, I can do it again. So can you all. Don't give up. Be patient. Focus on taking care of yourself. I promise I will keep updating this forum until this crap goes away again. 

Hi Jess, some tough love coming your way. You CANNOT stop taking Antibiotics mid course. The Strep becomes immune to the antibiotic and then you need a stronger one. This is what causes superbugs. I think it's a great idea you're going to a specialist stop taking all the drugs you have in the house LOL it's just not helping and it could make you worse. I agree you should call your regular doctor but tell him what you've been doing so he understands what's going on. I hadn't had strep in 20 years because I had my tonsils out and recently got it case of strep that took three antibiotics to cure. The only reason it was cured was my best friend's sister's and ENT and she told me it was not being given the proper antibiotics. I had to take clindamycin to get rid of it. My son also got it and I called his pediatrician and told him to give him clindamycin cuz that's what I was on and it worked and cured both of us. Antibiotics are nothing to mess with and unless your doctor don't switch them up and don't stop taking them before they're all gone out of the bottle. I really hope you take my advice follow your doctor's orders exactly and I hope you get better real soon.~ Carole

I'm so glad I found this post– thank you for sharing! I'm going on five weeks of battling a mystery sore throat/cough that I really think is tonsillitis, and reading this makes me feel less hopeless and frustrated. I'm just so sick of my throat hurting to some degree and feeling drained all the time.

When I first got sick I was on amoxicillin and it seemed to knock out whatever I had initially (I tested negative for both the flu and strep), but after a few days of feeling like I was almost all the way recovered, I was hit with a different kind of sore throat, and that's the one I've been battling for weeks now. It will seem like it's almost better and then *bam,* the next day I'm in pain again. So far I keep testing negative for step, but I have white spots on my tonsils now, so I don't know what's going on– I guess I have to head back to the ENT to get checked out yet again (this will be my fourth doctor visit in the past few weeks). It's been reassuring to see your updates and hear that at one point you worried if you would ever feel better– that's definitely how I've been feeling lately. On top of the throat stuff, my ear has felt stuffed up for the past five weeks as well and hasn't responded to the prednisone the dr gave me, so I have to go on a higher dose, which I'm not too thrilled about. Ugh. I really just want to figure out what the heck is going on and get it solved– I just don't feel like myself right now at all.

Thank you sooo much for sharing this, its been a week of hell so far for me. I was swabbed for strep throat and it came back positive. I started the antibiotic monday. I took my two kids to the clinic and they were tested also with a positive reading but the dr didn't want them to have a prescription because they were eating and playing okay with zero complaints. I thought that was odd but figured I'd bring them back if they have any symptoms. Its now a week od taking the antibiotics and I have this horrible lump in my throat! No matter what I do it won't go away. My heads pounding my stomachs aching bad! I feel awful and I'm told finish the amoxicillin and in 10 days I should feel better I just want this to be over. I feel like somethings wrong and I need better answers.

You need a new Dr. I cannot believe he won't treat your children. We needed Clindamycin to clear our strain of strep. I am not giving medical advice, just saying what heloed me. My ENT said the steain of strep we had couldn't be cured by Amoxicillin or Augmentin. Good luck.

Omg ill be going to the hospital then. This is b.s

Hey there,

Recovery is tough, and recurring illness is depressing and just hard. I recently had a beautiful baby and he was delivered by an emergency c-section. Recovering from that was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever gone through. That was beginning of November. And then in January of this year, I had UTI symptoms and took Antibiotics. They did not help the urgency to urinate and for 3 months I kept going back to my doctors. They did urine tests and blood tests and they all came back negative for any kind of infection. Well, end of April, I woke up in the middle of the night with excruciating pain. I told my husband we had to go to the ER immediately. The pain was so bad I threw up on the way to the ER. When I got there, they did blood tests and a urine test. I had bacteria in my urine. They gave me antibiotics through an IV. Then they did a CT scan and found a kidney stone.  The kidney stone was too large to pass, so they ended up giving me a lithotripsy and a cystoscopy.  They then had to place a stent in my kidney to allow urine to pass because there was a lot of swelling.  It took about a week to heal and go back to work. I’ve still been having kidney pain since then on and off. On Saturday I woke up feeling like my kidneys were awful again, and I felt terrible all over. Then I got a high fever of 102.6. Hubby took me to urgent care. He said I needed to go to the ER. They did all the tests again and they all came back negative. I went home totally confused. Last night I went back to urgent care because I started to get a sore throat. My husband saw white spots on the back of my throat. I took the strep test, and it came back negative. I’m still waiting for the culture to come back, but let me tell you, I haven’t felt 100% for such a long time. Hang in there. This might be totally unrelated to what you had going on last year.   If you think something else is up, I’d ask for X-ray or scans, and more testing instead of more antibiotics. Although they might give you both. And yes, you have to finish the full course of antibiotics, or your bacteria comes back stronger. It learns how to resist it because it didn’t kill it off completely, there are tiny traces left behind and it learns how to resist it. Like a smoldering fire.  Hope you are healing and feeling better ??

Hey, I’m sorry you went through all of that trouble, and I’m super happy you resolved the problem. I’m having (what I think) is (hopefully) a similar problem to yours. I’m just curious, when you say you felt like food/a lump was stuck in the center of your throat, did you mean Center as in near your thyroid center, like halfway down your neck? Or the Center as in the back of your throat where you can see when you look into your mouth? Mine is half way down my throat near my thyroid, and I’ve been having almost a dry/burny feeling off and on as well. I’m on my third round of antibiotics since the end of May. I am so worked up about it possibly being something way more serious, I’ve been desperately scouring the internet looking for simpler reasons for it. Thanks for reading! And hope to hear from you soon.

Hi, I am having issues also, I had strep throat in Dec and I am still having issues with my neck and throat and it also feels super dry like you said yours did. I have been gargling with salt water from time to time and it helps somewhat. I need to go back to my Dr and see what's going on because beginning of Dec I had strep and then a month later I started with a cough and went to the Dr and she said no infection I had a cold but after the cold went away I felt better for a bit then started with dry cough and the throat issues again. I'm worried. I also suspect it may have something to do with my Mirena IUD. I will keep you all posted.