Posted 6/18/2020 9:54 PM (GMT 0)
I had something similar happen to me. I was diagnosed with a bad case of tonsillitis in 2007. I took the antibiotics and thought I was okay enough to get my next dose of Remicade.
I went to the infusion center and the nurse said I looked like I was getting sick (red cheeks) and I had a fever. She called the doc on the phone - he was at home packing for a trip to Mexico. He said to go ahead with the infusion.
Allowing the dose of Remicade was the WORST DECISION I’ve ever gone along with in my life. The infection came back with a vengeance. The immune suppression caused the tonsillitis to come back in such a way that it became life threatening.
I ended up in an emergency room with both tonsils swollen up so big that it was millimeters away from suffocating me (confirmed by MRI).
After loads of steroids, my breathing was no longer compromised, but my tonsils were still HUGE and horribly painful. I was sent to an ENT who said that needed removal immediately - and that I probably had lymphoma. He was wrong about the lymphoma.
After my tonsils came out, the same infection that caused my tonsils to swell up stayed with me for an entire year. This is TMI, but I could see strings of dark green mucous at the back of my throat. I’d look because that infected sinus goo burned my throat like crazy. So for a year, I carried around a flashlight, a small mirror and tweezers to pull the gunk out of my throat. It was disgusting, yet entirely real.
I eventually went off all biologics for a year to get rid of the infection. That worked.
But 6-7 months later, I started to having serious breathing issues. I was diagnosed with bronchiectasis (a form of COPD) and asthma. It’s never been established why that all started at the age of 43 by a non-smoker. But I think that all the infected mucus that I didn’t manually remove went down into my lungs, creating the obstruction that was diagnosed as COPD.
That infection has been gone for 12 years, but my breathing problems persist. I was doing pretty well with the Crohn’s before the tonsillitis explosion, but the breathing trouble changed EVERYTHING. By the start of 2014, I had to leave the job that I loved and worked like crazy to get because I couldn’t function the way I did when Crohn’s was my only problem.
All the above is to say that I would be exceedingly cautious with allowing your daughter to take any biologic until you’re absolutely sure that her strep throat is gone.
I know it seems dramatic to say that taking that dose of Remicade when I had not completely cleared the infection ruined my life. But it did.
Being a little late on the biologic schedule is far more preferable to what happened to me. Good luck.