Is three days after seeing a doctor and getting significantly worse reason enough to go back again, or is it too soon?

[stonecold3169]

I went to the doctor on Saterday, I knew I had strep throat because I could smell and taste it (anyone who has had it bad or been around someone who has knows that it has a very distinct nasty smell to it). I also at this point had developed a nasty ear infection in both ears (My body ALWAYS does when I get sick, even though I'm in my twenties and this is supposed to stop happening around the early teens). The doc put me on Zpack, and so I'm on day 3 of that and my strep is gone or at least mostly gone... I can no longer taste or smell it.

However, my tonsils have swollen even more, and my ears hurt significantly more to the point of where they are ringing almost constantly. I'm probably a bit more careful with my ears then most because as a kid I ruptured my right eardrum twice from infections, causing noticable hearing loss in that ear.

Now, the tricky thing is that I'm stuck at university over spring break because I'm dying a slow and horrible death, and I had to cancel my plans. Because of this, I don't have my regular doctor here, and have to rely upon after hours clinics, which is weird. I don't want to go back if the next 2 days of the zpack are supposed to be the magical days, but I can't sleep with this, and I'm popping 2 800mg ibuprofen tabs every 6 hours for the pain and it's still killing me. Any suggestions?

 

[marleymarl]

uh, call your doctor?

 

[The Sauce]

NO IT'S NOT TOO SOON TO GO BACK! Ever...even if it's a few hours and things are getting worse. Especially if you are still having fevers. The Z-Pack does stick around for a while...a week I think. If I were you I might try using a decongestant - like Afrin. That might decompress your inner-ear a bit.

 

[stonecold3169]

Originally posted by: marleymarl
uh, call your doctor?

Like I said, I don't have a doctor here, and even my regular doctor from home is not in on Mondays. The clinic I've been going to is an afterhours clinic, and is thus open 4pm-0pm, so thats another 6 hours or so away

 

[DeadByDawn]

I just got over strep last week, and they told me that if ANY of the symptoms got worse after I started taking the antibiotics, go back to the doctor. Better safe then sorry.

 

[AEnigmaWI]

go to a health center in a nice hospital. Have them look at your ears. Do this now. Pressure and pain in your ears can be from fluid build up, and may not alleviate itself without intervention of some type. You don't want to rupture anything again. Also, make sure you were diagnosed correctly for strep. The only way to reliably diagnose strep is with a swab test where the actually culture the bacteria. Going on taste/smell/feel/visual is not reliable. You may have a viral infection that is not responding to the antibiotics.

 

[stonecold3169]

** update**

So, I went to the doctor again, where he checked my ears and said they were completely fine, and that Iwas just feeing minor iritation from my sore throat...

Later that night I went to the ER. My lymph nodes in my neck had swollen to 32cm in diameter and my temperture skyrocketed. They did a blood test and I have mono, although the doctor suspects I'll be perfectly fine in just 3-5 days. I don't have any of the "typical" mono symptoms, such as I'm not fatigued at all, nausiated, no headaches, no enlarged spleen, etc. However, the fact that my mono spot came back positive means I'm making the antibodies for it, and means that I shouldn't develop any more symptoms of it, a very good thing.

So, I was given to add to my goodies:
Prednisone in very small doses... I'm aware that this reduces the immune system, but the doc swore in the levels I was getting it that the goodness of reducing the swelling would far outway an extra lingering day or two of mono with the main symptom removed.

for painkillers, 800mg of ibuprofen and 2 tylenol with codein every 8 hours. Seems to work out okay for me so far.

I'll keep you posted on how things go from here.

 

[mdbound]

Good luck! Though, now I doubt that you had strep throat at all. It was probably mono all along.

MD.

 

[Azraele]

Feel better soon.

 

[The Sauce]

Originally posted by: stonecold3169
** update**

So, I went to the doctor again, where he checked my ears and said they were completely fine, and that Iwas just feeing minor iritation from my sore throat...

Later that night I went to the ER. My lymph nodes in my neck had swollen to 32cm in diameter and my temperture skyrocketed. They did a blood test and I have mono, although the doctor suspects I'll be perfectly fine in just 3-5 days. I don't have any of the "typical" mono symptoms, such as I'm not fatigued at all, nausiated, no headaches, no enlarged spleen, etc. However, the fact that my mono spot came back positive means I'm making the antibodies for it, and means that I shouldn't develop any more symptoms of it, a very good thing.

So, I was given to add to my goodies:
Prednisone in very small doses... I'm aware that this reduces the immune system, but the doc swore in the levels I was getting it that the goodness of reducing the swelling would far outway an extra lingering day or two of mono with the main symptom removed.

for painkillers, 800mg of ibuprofen and 2 tylenol with codein every 8 hours. Seems to work out okay for me so far.

I'll keep you posted on how things go from here.

Sore throat and lymphadenopathy are exactly the typical symptoms of mono. The steroids will help.

 

[stonecold3169]

Originally posted by: Snatchface

Originally posted by: stonecold3169
** update**

So, I went to the doctor again, where he checked my ears and said they were completely fine, and that Iwas just feeing minor iritation from my sore throat...

Later that night I went to the ER. My lymph nodes in my neck had swollen to 32cm in diameter and my temperture skyrocketed. They did a blood test and I have mono, although the doctor suspects I'll be perfectly fine in just 3-5 days. I don't have any of the "typical" mono symptoms, such as I'm not fatigued at all, nausiated, no headaches, no enlarged spleen, etc. However, the fact that my mono spot came back positive means I'm making the antibodies for it, and means that I shouldn't develop any more symptoms of it, a very good thing.

So, I was given to add to my goodies:
Prednisone in very small doses... I'm aware that this reduces the immune system, but the doc swore in the levels I was getting it that the goodness of reducing the swelling would far outway an extra lingering day or two of mono with the main symptom removed.

for painkillers, 800mg of ibuprofen and 2 tylenol with codein every 8 hours. Seems to work out okay for me so far.

I'll keep you posted on how things go from here.

Sore throat and lymphadenopathy are exactly the typical symptoms of mono. The steroids will help.

Well, I must say I don't have the nasty symptoms. If I take an ibuprofen and my steriods, you'd swear the only thing wrong with me was a stuffy nose, which I can ive with