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Pain won’t stop. Doctor not helping. Please help me figure this out!
Please bare with me. This is my first post, so a little background...
I suffer from a very debilitating case of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and one of my main obsessions in my health. What’s been going on is completely weighing on my mind to a degree I cannot handle any longer, and I need help.
Last Tuesday night I started to develop a scratchy throat. I instantly got concerned, as my throat never hurts—even with a cold—unless I have strep throat, which I tend to get twice a year. I looked down the back of my throat, and low and behold, white spots! I saw my doctor promptly the next day.
My doctor looked down my throat and did a rapid strep test. The test came back negative and the doctor suspected that the spots I was seeing were tonsil stones—very likely, as I’ve been told by my ENT that I have many of these. She advised me that she thinks what I was experiencing was simple sinus drainage and to push liquids and to take Zyrtec and Mucinex.
By the next day, my throat was not only scratchy, but my tonsils felt like a truck was hitting them every time I swallowed. It’s been a week, and it’s felt l like that ever since, along with this same severe pain when swallowing in my ears/eustachian tubes. My throat actually no longer hurts on its own. It’s just when swallowing. The pain is SEVERE.
Over the weekend I was forced to go to an Urgent Care center, as I had developed bacterial pink eye. I’m on eye drops and am now symptom-less (is that a word?), but finishing up the bottle. I was also swabbed for flu at this time, and that, too, came back negative. The Urgent Care doctor was very obviously rushing to get home (he stated that the entire staff was waiting to leave) and didn’t even look in my ears! My throat actually doesn’t look red or bad at all when you look at it. Its for this reason that he didn’t believe I needed a further strep culture. It’s like, BEHIND the tonsils/in the neck that this pain is unbearable. So it doesn’t surprise me that my throat looks okay. He gave me a diagnosis of a viral upper respiratory infection after barely looking me over. (How could VIRAL URI give me BACTERIAL pink eye?)
Other symptoms are stuffy/dry nose, hacking cough, coughing up yellow mucus. Occasional pressure in my teeth. Itchy ears. I’ve had no fever throughout the entire thing.
My doctor’s keep telling me that this is a virus and refusing to give me any medicine. They just keep telling me to push Mucinex and liquids like I’m drowning. They’ve been telling me this for a week now, and my symptoms haven’t budged. In fact, they’ve worsened. And when they originally saw me, all I felt was a tiny scratch in my throat. I didn’t have any of these symptoms. I have an appointment tomorrow. They keep dismissing me as an anxiety case on the phone and not taking my level of pain seriously. I’m at a loss of what to do to ease my mind. I can not afford to go back to Urgent Care, and I mentally cannot afford to sit in an Emergency Room (worst OCD nightmare).
Does anyone have any idea if it’s normal for me to be having this disturbingly painful swallowing for this long? I’ve never experienced painful swallowing without strep. And definitely never for this long. I’m in agony.
// side note: I have no idea if this has anything to do with it, but the Friday before showing any symptoms (onset late-Tuesday evening), we tried a new kitty litter formula in the house. The odor this produced was so strong and overbearing that it was making me gag. I had to go out in the middle of the night to buy new just to get rid of it, as it overran the entire apartment. Other people in the household smelled it and thought it was strong, but it seemed to affect me the worst. I was VERY sensitive to the smell. Even with it gone, I continued to smell it all through the night and the entire next day. I didn’t know if any chemicals in that stuff could have possibly triggered all of this. //
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@brdwybaby Welcome to our caring group of wonderful,helpful people Use to be they removed tonsils@adnoids I had mine donr at 17 dont know if they do that anymore
@lioness Thank you!
As far as I know, they don’t typically do a tonsillectomy anymore unless as a last resort, as the benefits usually do not outweigh the risks. I was told last year that, as an adult, I am not enough of a priority for my ENT to even consider removing them. I tend to get strep once to twice a year, and he said no less than six annual infections would he consider removing the pesky things.
@brdwybaby Sorry they dont do that anymore
Does anyone know if pain this bad for this long when swallowing is normal? Also, for some reason the pain feels temporarily better (for a very short-lived time) after eating. Weird.
I have experienced the white spot syndrome on my tongue and my doctor diagnosed the cause as thrush. He wrote me a prescription for clotrimazole, which is providing slow but effective results.
@jimchardy A long time ago the Dr diagnosed me with thrush it was before a medicine was found so he told me to take Riboflavin it,s a B vitamin
@brdwybaby It just might be that the fragrances in the cat litterwere the cause of your sore throat. I have cats and only use unscented products at home because chemicals trigger my asthma and allergies. Cats don't like fragrances either and are more sensitive to it that we humans are. I use the recycled paper pellets cat litter because they are relatively dust free (Brands- Yesteday's News or Fresh News). I have lots of allergies to dust, molds, etc, and that can cause a sore throat for me. My airways will swell with fragrances triggering asthma and that makes it hard for me to be around people who are wearing them or places like the laundry detergent aisle in the grocery store. I also use HEPA filters in my home and do allergy shots. It's detective work to figure this stuff out sometimes.
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1 Reaction@jenniferhunter I actually talked to my doctor about that being the culprit today, and she seemed to think it wasn’t related. She thought this because I don’t have any actual breathing issues, as that probably would’ve irritated my lungs more than anything. Also, I don’t have an active sore throat. What I mean by that is... when I’m just sitting and doing nothing, my throat feels absolutely fine. Its not raw or scratchy at all. It’s only when I swallow that my tonsils (and sometimes ears) feel like they’re being stabbed. They insist it’s just drainage, but this is just SO painful and lengthy. I’m having a hard time believing it. I was tested again for strep today, and again it came back negative. I’ve also had four doctors tell me two different things: two say sinus drainage, two say virus. What am I supposed to think? And once again, if it is a virus... why wouldn’t the pink eye be VIRAL? It was definitely bacterial. I keep worrying that I need antibiotics and I’m not being given the proper treatment. It hurts SO bad, and taking Tylenol all the time for the pain makes me anxious. I don’t want to take too much for too long. It barely takes the edge off anyway. But I am coughing less! So maybe it is a virus I’m slowly getting over. I don’t know. The pain is just so severe that it makes me fret, and my mind needs some rest. I’m just fed up.
@brdwybaby Sinus drainage does cause a lot of ear pain, and maybe it is a sinus infection. You could take an expectorant like Mucinex (or the generic) to thin the mucus. Another suggestion is a sinus rinse bottle and saline, but if you're clogged and that fluid goes into the Eustacian tubes by your ears and doesn't drain, that will hurt. One thing that has helped me a lot with sinus and chest infections was an antibiotic ointment, Mupiroicin (generic) or Bactroban (brand name), that I got from Mayo as a preventative when I had my spine surgery. It was to kill off staff infections to prevent complications, and they had me put a pea sized glob in each nostril twice a day. I tried that for a sinus infection since I had this and it worked. I also had repeating chest infections because I was accumulating too much phlegm in my lungs from allergies, and this worked for that too. My doctor gave me a prescription so I always have this available. You could ask your doctor about that. It's a topical antibacterial ointment for skin. Another thing that might help which I've done, is to inhale steam from a vaporizer or sinus vapor mask and put a drop of oil of oregano in it, so that mixes with the steam. Be careful being too close to the steam so you don't burn the inside of your nose and lungs and the oregano vapor stings a bit, but you can put a towel over your head to collect it around you. Oil of oregano is antibacterial, but don't try to put that in your nose. You can try a cold pack on your forehead which would help shrink swollen sinus membranes if that is the cause. It's no fun being sick, but hang in there.
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1 Reaction@jenniferhunter Thank you so much! I’m currently using Mucinex and Flonase!
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