Tonsillitis

[Cuppaandbiscuit]

My daughter (4) said it hurts when she swallows last night and I looked in her throat with my phone light and there’s white spots on her tonsils. She’s absolutely fine other than that though. No fever, not ill with it and still normal in herself. The only thing is she said she had a tummy ache the past two mornings. My plan is to take her to the doctors tomorrow but should I be going to the out of hours place today? I know if it’s strep it needs treatment but it’s strange how she’s well with no fever.

This was how my child presented with frequent tonsillitis.
No fever, minimal pain, eating & drinking as usual. Not at all unwell. Really really odd as it used to make my niece extremely unwell when she got it.
Sometimes the only reason I knew he had it was because his breath smelled bad, he snored when sleeping and his voice changed. Otherwise not unwell.
For this reason he never had antibiotics or pan relief because he just didn’t need them.
Tummy pain once was mesenteric adonitis which is related to infection in kids apparently. Was self limiting.

Every child is different of course and I would still say get her checked out and get medical advice.

Yes, that’s exactly how she is. I’ve noticed her breath in the mornings too. I don’t want to use antibiotics unnecessarily with her. I’ll wait until tomorrow then and get the gp to decide. My son has had it so many times and been really unwell with it.

Kids are funny!

I did take him to the OOO once after being pressured by relatives because the assumption is that regardless of how they are in themselves, if they have white spots then they MUST have antibiotics.
Thank goodness the Nurse confirmed for me that unless confirmed as bacterial in origin (swabs can take longer to come back than symptoms abate) then antibiotics are not mandatory.

She mentioned something about antibiotics reducing the duration of the infection by something like 24 hours.

With an otherwise well child with absolutely no other symptoms, and antibiotic resistance nowadays, it seems like madness to give unnecessary medication that has its own side ef effects.

As he got older he now has less and less bouts.

Obviously if ever he had a sore throat I would absolutely give him paracetamol, ice lollies etc to keep his fluids up. Otherwise, not.

My daughter had tonsillitis loads when she was little. Never complained of a sore throat but always a sore belly. Turned out the Limthnodes in her belly were some how the same as her throat so they would get infected but she would have spots on her tonsils so always needed antibiotics but then she started getting use to them so they wouldn't work. Sounds silly but COVID made her stop getting it and she was due to get them out but couldn't as we went into lock down.