Oh My Gosh I Hurt. Is This Remicade Or Tonsils?

I am awake in the middle of the night, awakened by a horrendous headache. I had taken a tramadol and couple tylenol pm to rid myself of the headache before bed... but 3-4 hours later it is back.

My left tonsil is still very swollen, with white spots again on it. I considered taking it out, but thought I better leave it in there because it was hard to tell if my problems (body aches) recently were from Remicade or just a tonsil infection. If the Remicade is causing the tonsil to swell and be infected then do you consider it appropriate to take the tonsil out? Remi is holding me in remission with UC right now.

Man oh man do I hurt. Horrible headache, and achy throat.

I say go for it. Was it you that asked about tonsil removal as an adult or was that a different poster? I had mine out when I was 30. No lie, the surgery is quite rough but the long term benefits definitely made it worth it.

Sounds like some Mono symptoms to me.

I just don't understand why your docs won't try to treat the mono and staph. Try gargling with half peroxide, half water and tell me if that helps at all. 3x a day. That should literally start helping in 24 hrs if its gonna help.

You can try olive leaf extract, monolaurin and oregano oil and I bet you'd get some relief in a few weeks. You'd need to stay on it for awhile.

Also, you have to protect your immune system by treating any stress very importantly. Try to sleep better, eat better and supplement bioavailable b vitamins.

Let me catch up here...

Gary: Oh yes these symptoms feel like mono. However, I have done tests twice with the infectious disease doctor indicating no viral replication of EBV. So, I am still somewhat at a loss here with that train of thought.

Q: I definitely agree with you in regards to getting the tonsils out, even if they are not my entire issue. I am addressing my stresses one by one. My two major ones are work and health. I cannot focus on work adequately unless I am healthy, so I'm choosing health first... or at least congruently with work. Dismissing the tonsils as a cause will further allow me to hone in on my pains.

Pathogen: Again, the doctors are not detecting an active mono infection. As far as staph goes, we re-did my throat swab after the 17 days of levaquin, and my culture came back negative. If it had been positive still we would have yanked the tonsils out then.

ScienceGirl: I'm not attached to my tonsils really, no. If they weren't a cause of my issues (body aches, joint aches) then I didn't think taking them out was appropriate. But the way my throat is hurting now is indicating definite tonsil involvement.

Anyways, today I scheduled my tonsillectomy tentatively for next Tuesday. I've also talked with my dad and he is able to reschedule his hernia surgery later on so that we have no worries about not being able to operate our business.

My main issue now is that I will be delaying my remicade infusion 18 days. The last time I delayed it a week I flared badly. I am a bit concerned about how to approach this aspect of things. The surgery doesn't have me worried, but the UC symptoms may come to be an issue. Does anyone have suggestions on that?

I do not believe this is an option for this surgery. It is pretty severe in nature, and has raw openings right where all sorts of daily things pass through as you begin to digest them. The opportunity for infection is too great to risk it until they heal some.