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

[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!