Friday, February 3, 2006

My strep story

When I was 8, I had strep throat. My mom says I didn't finish the antibiotic. A few weeks later, I had both Scarlet Fever and then Rheumatic Fever. Very sick - hospital for a week, no school for several weeks. For months I was on high doses of aspirin (I think for the joint pain). For the next 8 years, I took antibiotics daily to prevent getting strep again. Then at 16, I began passing blood in my stool and within a few weeks I was hospitalized and eventually had my colon surgically removed. The surgeons weren't able to tell if I had Crohn's disease or Ulcerative Colitis at the time. There wasn't much tissue left to test. A nurse brought up the subject of antibiotics possibly causing my gut problems and even brought some of her nursing school books for my mom to read. She probably got in trouble for that. The surgeons then said that they sent a sample for testing to see if the antibiotics had caused the ulceration, but that test came back negative (I do not believe any test was done. I think it is a total CMB lie). I refused to take the antibiotics any more. That was 22 years ago, and I've not had strep since (I've not had many antibiotics since either). I've also not had any more ulceration, though I get some autoimmune problems associated w/Crohn's. I did finally get a diagnosis about 10 years ago of "Crohn's Colitis", a combination of the 2 where the ulceration seems limited to the colon, but acts in other ways as Crohn's does.

Sorry, I didn't mean to ramble so much. And if I were dealing w/strep now, I'd go natural/homeopathic first. If that didn't help, I might reluctantly drag myself to an allopathic doctor.

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