Scarlet fever

[Lee22e]

Hello,
I was wondering if anyone could share their experiences with scarlet fever.

What were the symptoms? How poorly were they? Was it very apparent that it was scarlet fever? How high is the associated fever? Did the rash linger for several days or longer? How does one decided when to be seen if the symptoms are vague or short in duration?

My family has been sick for two weeks with what we thought was a virus. Mine started with a sore throat as the only symptom for several days but my husband and son went to the coughing/nasal phase immediately. It seemed viral. We went through familiar and swift patterns of recovery so we did not see a doctor. We are mainly coping with the lingering cough now. Some stubborn nasal symptoms. My guess was covid but we have noticed some flaking dry skin symptoms in all of us at varying times. My son has a white spot on his finger that my husband thinks is from friction (drawing/computer) but I'm really afraid that we had subclinical scarlet fever with this skin sloughing as a sign.

I have not had strep to my knowledge and my husband says it would be way worse than what we had if it was. I really hope to be talked down from the ledge.
Thank you so much.

I thought my DD just had a virus, but it was the strawberry tongue that the GP noticed

Flushed face, high temperature, very sore throat and tongue

My DD had undiagnosed Strep A. I'm not sure what you're describing points to it really as even without the classic symptoms of scarlet fever I think people tend to be really unwell with it.

The process for my DD was a normal cold first then over a week later very high temperature (40.2) and just generally very unwell but had no rash, no strawberry tongue, only a mildly sore throat etc. Taken to out of hours doctor who said her throat looked ok and said probably viral but prescribed antibiotics anyway (let's not even get started on this...). I felt like she probably did have an infection so decided to start the antibiotics as I was unnerved by how unwell she was.

Three days later still very unwell and seen at our own GP surgery. Again they couldn't find anything wrong. Very quick and probably ineffective throat swab taken which came back clear.

Then she had a few days where she seemed to be getting better, probably because the antibiotic did start to bat off the Strep A but then she started to go downhill again. I absolutely knew deep down something was wrong as DD wasn't herself. It was like she'd had a personality change.

It was 16 days between the first day of being very unwell to finding out she had Strep A. By then it was very obvious there was something sinister going on and after a bit of a faff getting the hospital to take us seriously she was started on the right treatment.

For me I just knew that DD was seriously unwell. Like most kids she had so many viruses and infections while acclimatising to nursery etc. and despite bronchiolitis, norovirus, flu, chicken pox, I never felt properly worried during any of these illnesses. Strep A had a different edge to it.

Kids- sandpaper rash on upper arms and very sore throats.

I just got the very sore throat. Extremely rapid onset.