Re: vs Chronic Tonsillitis?

June 26, 2008

The way I understood it was Tonillitis was infected tonsills, like with strep

and such.. with my daughter being a bit older and able to verbalize...we knew

although her throat looked horrible and painful, it actually wasn't. It always

looked like she had strep but she didn't. I can only speak for my daughter and

that's how it is with her episodes... looks awful... not always painful... neg

for strep.

June 27, 2008

The way it was explained to me, tonsillitis is just a general term for infected,

inflamed tonsils. Its a bit of a catch all, nothing specific.

Tonsillitis can accompany any number of conditions, including PAPFA if you child

exhibits the throat problems. For his tonsillitis came either in the

form of puss sacks all in the pits of his tonsils, or ulcers all over his

tonsils. The ulcers were WAY worse than the puss, they were like huge canker

sores all over. Which ever he had, the symptom was referred to tonsillitis

since he was strep negative.

To doctors who are unaware of , the often jump to the conclusion that the

puss is strep and the ulcers are viral.

I read somewhere that one doctor theorizes that the tonsils in harbor a

currently undetectable infection that makes the immune system over-react. This

doctor theorizes that in , even healthy appearing tonsils harbor and

infection that triggers the immune response.

did not always have the tonsil involvement and even only started that

symptom about 5 months before his T & A (along with some really scary looking

swollen glands). Whichever the case, or not, those tonsils had to go.

Even if the fevers return, without the tonsils, it will make his life much more

comfortable that it was before.

June 27, 2008

The way it was explained to me, tonsillitis is just a general term for infected,

inflamed tonsils. Its a bit of a catch all, nothing specific.

Tonsillitis can accompany any number of conditions, including PAPFA if you child

exhibits the throat problems. For his tonsillitis came either in the

form of puss sacks all in the pits of his tonsils, or ulcers all over his

tonsils. The ulcers were WAY worse than the puss, they were like huge canker

sores all over. Which ever he had, the symptom was referred to tonsillitis

since he was strep negative.

To doctors who are unaware of , the often jump to the conclusion that the

puss is strep and the ulcers are viral.

I read somewhere that one doctor theorizes that the tonsils in harbor a

currently undetectable infection that makes the immune system over-react. This

doctor theorizes that in , even healthy appearing tonsils harbor and

infection that triggers the immune response.

did not always have the tonsil involvement and even only started that

symptom about 5 months before his T & A (along with some really scary looking

swollen glands). Whichever the case, or not, those tonsils had to go.

Even if the fevers return, without the tonsils, it will make his life much more

comfortable that it was before.

June 27, 2008

I spoke to another one of my son's doctors and got what I felt was a

fairly decent explanation. Hopefully I can re-explain it!

Tonsillitis is a generic term for inflamed tonsils. The inflammation

can be due to a host of different things - bacteria, virus, etc. You

do the rapid strep test to rule out strep, the culture to see if other

bacterias exist, and I believe my son even had a viral swab done by

one of his initial IDs. These are all infectious causes. When you rule

out the above, then you are left with just plain old inflamed tonsils.

Some kids have inflamed tonsils with an unknown cause... hence

the unknown autoimmune vs inflammatory issue associated with .

I guess I was worried we were over-complicating my son's condition

since he seems to always have inflamed tonsils. Now that I've

confirmed we've ruled out bacteria other than strep etc I'm a bit more

comfortable. Just thought I'd share.

June 27, 2008