Talking Medical Stuff: Strep Throat

I'm intrigued by the human body. It's so intricately made and well designed. God is a great architect!
About two weeks ago I was suffering with allergies pretty bad. After about a week I woke up one morning with a pain in my neck (and it wasn't Joel or the kids!). As the day progressed, the pain got worse. I went to see a doctor.

The doc looked at everything and said he thought it was allergies but the swollen gland in my throat indicated something else was going on. He didn't think it was strep, though. So, he just prescribed me amoxicillin and told me to take it until I was feeling better; I didn't have to finish it as you usually do. He also gave me a 6-day steroid pack to get my body to "calm down" from it's overreaction to the environmental allergens. He also told me to keep taking the Zyrtec I was already taking. I did as he said and started to feel better within a day or two.

Fast forward a little...last Saturday Jenna was complaining that she wasn't feeling well. She said her throat was hurting. She had a touch of fever (not sure exactly how high because our thermometer wasn't working). Her fever went down with OTC meds, but we only used it once so she could get some sleep. After that I insisted that she ride it out because it was her body's way of fighting it off. She was better by Monday and no longer had fever and didn't complain any longer about her throat hurting.
Skip a few days again...my neck started getting really sore yesterday afternoon (swollen gland and then a sore throat too). I was already tired, but I started to get a headache. As the evening progressed, my throat got more and more sore. By bedtime, I was having a lot of pain when swallowing. I tossed and turned all night, feeling like I hardly got any sleep though I was technically in the bed for 9 hours! Every swallow was increasingly more painful. So, I called the doctor's office and got an appointment for this morning.

The PAC who treated me decided to do a strep swab and came back 5 minutes later to inform me it was positive. I chose to get a shot of a strong antibiotic rather than do pills. While having strep stinks, I'm so grateful to know what it is and have such an easy medicine to take for it.

But, all this got me to thinking. I wanted to know more about strep throat and how it's spread. I googled it and found the information intriguing.
Some things that were right on target for me:
Symptoms - difficulty swallowing, sudden fever, tender swollen lymph nodes in the neck, headache, muscle pain.

But, what I found most interesting was the other info. It says the infection is spread person-to-person through nasal secretions or saliva, often among family members of the same household. People with strep throat get sick 2-5 days after exposure. The illness usually begins suddenly.

Why are those things interesting to me? Well, they interest me because I was wondering how in the world I got it! Duh! My kids. Jenna specifically. I think she was probably fighting it off last weekend. We didn't interfere with her fever (except that one dose of pain meds), so her body was able to do its thing and she got better. I, on the other hand, had just taken a dose of antibiotics and steroids and have been on a non-steroid anti-inflammatory medicine to help my shoulder. I'm thinking the things I've been taking didn't allow my body to respond like Jenna's did and fight it on its own.

Hmmm...

I'm no doctor, that's for sure. But, after reading more about strep and pondering Jenna's recent aches and pains and my own, I'm even more impressed with the human body. God made it so wonderfully...every single one of them!