The Dynamite offspring have enjoyed their fair share of pestilence this winter, so much so that our local pediatricians can literally smell us coming.
"I suspect she has strep again," I say to the doctor, based solely upon the fact that my daughter woke me up repeatedly the night before, clutching her neck and straining through her tears to whisper, "My...throat..."
In response to my amateur diagnosis, the doctor said without any hesitation, "Yeah. I can smell it."
She could smell it. She could smell the strep.
What else could this woman smell? I wondered, fearful and somewhat embarrassed. Coffee breath? Wet dog? Old perfume with hints of sandalwood and jasmine?
I shuddered to think.
"Um, you can smell strep throat?" I asked, half-smiling at the notion and half-wondering if my daughter would have to endure the intrusion of a throat culture after all.
The doctor smiled back at me and nodded. "Yes," she said. "There's a distinct smell."
There's a distinct smell.
Am I the only one who never knew this?
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8 comments:
Don't feel bad - perhaps you simply cannot smell it. My husband can't smell anything pleasant, but he is strongly affected by bad odors.
which could explain why he is so hard to cook for...
Yep. There is a smell for many things in medicine. Strep, diabetics who are going into Ketoacidosis, GI Bleeds, infectious diarrhea. They all have their own distinct smell.
Now, that being said, i also had Strep this past week and was probably the last person to notice!
Never knew.
huh. really? learned something new today.
My oldest develped chronic strep when he was 7 and ultimately had to have his tonsils out. I got to the point that I knew when it was recurring just by smelling his breath. And once in the emergency room, an obviously new intern nearly fell over when my son breathed on him. His supervisor laughed and said "Strep breath, get used to it."
Really? I've never heard that before...that's wild!
I can always tell when my kids have a throat infection by the way their breath smells. 'Tis true!
It's one of those things - my doctor has never mentioned it in all the (many) times I've had it, and always swabs to confirm strep before prescribing antibiotics - but I'm also fairly sure I've been able to tast it in my own mouth. Of course, the last two winters, I've had strp throat and passed strep without symptoms to both Misterpie and Pumpknpie... and no odour, either. Scary.
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