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I was no stranger to strep throat growing up, my first case was when I hit 4th grade or 9 years old. Ever since, strep was a common occurrence for me at least 2-3 times a year sometimes more and let me tell you it sucked! I think the only positive to chronic pain was upping my pain tolerance. The beginning of the second semester of my junior year came, it was a Wednesday after school doing my home work when I instantly felt sick. I thought it could've been exhaustion mixed with the beginning of getting a cold, I finished homework then went to sleep. The next morning I woke up to an extremely sore throat, still not feeling my best I told my grandpa who said "drink something warm like coffee, it might help." I did exactly that, adding some pumpkin spice Coffee Mate creamer. I finished getting ready, and went to school. Lucky for me my first period (class) was office aid. I never thought that class was going to end, I felt awful, my throat hurt significantly at that point. I called my grandfather, told him to come get me so I can go home. Normally going home and having me sleep it off was what we did, but this time he actually made me an appointment for 10:30-11 a.m. . When we got called back I told the doctor about my frequent run in with the strep, I got tested which came back negative. I was honestly shocked, I really thought that I had strep once again. The doctor ordered me antibiotics just in case, to take if I start running a fever thinking that I could be in the beginning stages. We head home and I go straight to bed. No surprise, around 6 I start running a fever, so I take a pill. Throughout the evening I still feel horrible, progressing to the point talking was hard, and swallowing my own saliva was beginning to hurt too much. Knowing it'll get worse before it gets better, I don't complain and try to sleep as much as I can. Friday morning I get up, out of my pool of drool, to use the bathroom then go to take my next antibiotic, but it was too painful to swallow. At this point, I hadn't ate or drank anything for a 1 1/2 days, but I didn't care. Actually I should say that I had no desire other than to sleep. I couldn't swallow my spit, much less anything to eat or drink, it was too painful to even speak. My grandmother came in to tell me that her, my grandfather and sister were going to go grocery shopping leaving at 5. Thats when she noticed my jaw area by my ear and down the right side of my neck was swollen, that was a new side effect for strep. She started asking me questions which I couldn't talk at all, now realizing I couldn't open my mouth without it being super painful, thank God for texting and my grandparents being tech savvy. My grandma asked me if I wanted to go to the hospital, I shook my head no. I hate going to the doctors, forget the emergency room. She told me when they get back, if it looked worse we'd be going in. Turns out the three hours that they were gone made a pretty significant difference, emergency room here we come. I'm from a small town, like a really small town and of course everyone and their mother was there. Typical. I hated going to the er already, and after my experience I will only go if I'm on my death bed. It took forever which is normal, but I was having hard time breathing. Remember how I said it was hard for me to open my mouth, I could only open it about a centimeter. I had an old man doctor, just my luck, who's hand was shaking as he was sticking a tongue presser in my mouth. My grandpa and I made eye contact when we both saw how much the doctors hand was shaking. He hit the back of my swollen throat, I started tearing up at the sudden sharp excruciating pain I felt in the moment. Forcefully, he pushed down to open my mouth. I have a very high pain tolerance and I hate crying over pain, I started crying with how excruciating the pain felt. This old man had the nerve to get mad at me saying "I can't do my job if you won't let me look". Since he couldn't get a decent look at my mouth, he went to order some tests to get a clear picture. During the time the Old Man was away, it was a shift change so I got a new younger (still older but not dinosaur era) doctor. He luckily didn't have a shaky hand but was still rough to the touch. I guess I should mention I was able to get some medicine to help with the pain, thank you ibuprofen 800! That was a sarcastic "thank you", it didn't help. I didn't realize how in detail I went for the beginning so I'll cut to the chase. Basically they had no idea what was wrong with me. I arrived at the hospital around 8:30-9pm area, at 4am they finally got an answer. I had a Peritonsillar Abscess behind my right tonsil, and I needed to be transferred to a different hospital who had an Ear Nose Throat (ENT) specialist on call. I live in Paradise, California about 3 hours away from Sacramento. The next nearest hospital was about 30 minutes away in Chico but no ENT was available. In that moment of being told I needed to be transferred scared me, I started crying out of fear at that point. I never had anything more serious than a broken bone, this was new to me. My grandparents are pastors so in that moment they prayed over me and asked God would open the correct doors to find a ENT close to us. We were told that we most likely would have to go to a hospital in the Sacramento area, but they had to find one with, you guessed it, an ENT available. 5 minutes after praying, Chico was now where we were going. We waited for an ambulance, got loaded up and headed to Enloe. Upon arrival, we immediately were put into a room, where a nurse hooked me up to a bag and told us the doctor would be in in a little. We were expecting to wait around 20 minutes, but the doctor walked in as soon as the nurse was out of site. He pulled up the X-rays and showed us. We were completely shocked to see my airway was almost all the way closed, I had an opening half the size of a straw hole. No one at the other hospital told us how serious this was, shocked that they were so nonchalant about it, they just didn't have the right doctor to help me. I was immediately prepped for surgery after the x-ray revealing, 15 minutes after arriving. Last I remember I was putting on a hair cover, getting some medicine put into my I.V. . The next two days were a complete blur, I hardly remember waking up at all. I believe it was the third day, I was mostly coherent. My husband (boyfriend at the time), childhood best friend, her mom and boyfriend came to visit. That visit was cut short that night because I had to have another surgery done. The abscess came back full force, so they prepped me and did the surgery right in the room. As they were starting the surgery, my best friend at the time came to visit but couldn't be in the room, 'cause surgery. Thanks to her being there, she got to record the very hilarious aftermath of surgery pain medication, I was HIGH! It's embarrassing to seeing your grandma having to assist you to pee and then twerking on her, telling everyone I'm going to walk to Jamba Juice, and everyone is going on a walk with me. I ended up falling asleep for the night, waking up around noon the next, still pretty hazy. After 9 days I was finally released to go home. I had a hole in my mouth, bigger than the size of a quarter. It was hard to eat, and very painful. My breath smelt awful, but on the bright side I lost quite a bit of weight. I wasn't "overweight" per say
but I was chunky. It was hard to want to eat anything because it was painful and food got in my gaping hole frequently. as the days went on I of course was healed up after almost 2 months, then I was scheduled to get my tonsils out. It was another type of hell. My ENT said that my tonsils were so bad, that they were falling apart as he was taking them out. I was also on my way to another abscess, I had the beginning stages forming. Since I had so many years of damage caused by strep, along with almost dying from an abscess, the tonsils and adenoids were tested for cancer, which came back negative! That was the scariest and most painful situation that I have been in with my health, I'm so glad its done and over with. Since 2015 I haven't had a single illness other than allergy symptoms affect me, and haven't had strep throat since.
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