All my life, watching America

[venta]

Yesterday, I was reading a blog post by an American mum-of-five, and it was mentioned in passing that one of her daughters was really ill with strep.

Strep, you say?

I'm aware that American kids get strep throat. I'm even vaguely aware that that's short for streptococcus. What I'm not aware of is why us British kids don't get it. Is it one of those bizarre geographically-localised conditions? Is it something they make a fuss about that we don't?

So I took myself off to Wikipedia, and read up on Streptococcal pharyngitis. And it sounded dreadfully familiar. In fact, I had it when I was a kid. Repeatedly.

It's just that we call it by its more generic name of tonsilitis.

So there you go. Maybe you knew that anyway. I didn't, and I shall add a new word to my English/US dictionary (along with the recently-added fava beans, lima beans and garbanzo beans).

Edit for accuracy: it seems the most common cause of tonsilitis is viral, not bacterial. So strep throat is tonsilitis, but tonsilitis is not necessarily strep throat.

Comments

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

What I'm not aware of is why us British kids don't get it.

Actually, I got rather ill* in one or other of my finals years with strep throat.

*Not hospital ill, just regular kind of ill only with oral steroids for my lungs and lasting for several months. Because GPs kept assuming it was viral, and me not getting better was "proof" of how it was viral, so they didn't need to swab to test for bacteria because it was clearly viral. Got to love the circular logic.

Now I come to think about it, I seem to do well for having doctors jump immediately from six-eight weeks worth of "It's viral, have paracetamol and take these oral steroids" to an emergency phone call going "Lab results are back. We need you to come to the surgery TODAY to get these very specific antibiotics, no it REALLY can't wait".

[venta.livejournal.com]

Interestingly (or not), in all the years of my childhood where I had tonsilitis about once every three weeks (actually, literally that often at some points) I don't believe anyone ever did an actual swab test. So I don't know if I've had strep throat (although I certainly had enough penicillin to sink a battleship...).

I find the term "strep throat" quite counter-intuitive, because my experience of tonsilitis is that frankly the sore throat part of it is pretty much the least of your worries. Then again, maybe that's why (as zotz suggests above) it gets overused to mean "a sore throat".

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, I remember it well. All those nights of high fever, throwing up, swollen neck - but "they" had decided that taking out tonsils was not a good thing any more so I took you to the doc and said, "Too many antibiotics, tell me at what point to panic and then we'll have some."

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'm interested that the current NHS page on the topic (http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Tonsillitis/Pages/Introduction.aspx) agrees that it's most commonly viral (ie antibiotics won't help), and says only to go to the doctor if your child has been ill for more than 4 days, or is unable to eat/sleep.

I don't remember them ever testing to see if I had bacterial tonsilitis - did they? Or did they just dole out antibiotics and hope I'd go away?

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

More or less, and you were never tested for anything,. It was always (until I said stop) antibiotics. When you were about 13 with a monumental bout we saw another doc in the practice who gave you a fortnight's blockbuster (remember going out of class to matron's fridge?) and threatened extraction if it happened again. It didn't.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

My little neighbour B has suffered with frequent tonsillitis like that almost all her life. They finally decided to take her tonsils out, at the age of five. Seems to be working so far.

I, on the other hand, had it back in the day when they whipped tonsils out routinely at the slightest hint. I was too young to miss 'em.

[venta.livejournal.com]

When I was 15 or 16 they gave me a monster course of the most foul-tasting antibiotics I've ever had (and awkward, too - four times a day before food and they had to be kept in the fridge at all times, which made school days exciting). That was with the threat of "and if that doesn't work, we'll take your tonsils out".

Either the antibiotics, or the threat, fixed it.

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

Sorry, didn't scroll far enough down and missed that!