My son had strep in kindergarten, twice. The second time I didn’t believe him, but he said “It’s strep again, I know how it feels”. The pediatrician was somewhat skeptical as well but said that she’d test him just in case, and he did have it. Apparently the pain was distinctive enough for a 5 year old to recognize.
Have you and your household thrown away or seriously disinfected your toothbrushes BTW? Apparently that’s one reservoir and source of reinfection.
I was not much older than that when I had recurrent urinary tract infections, and I had the BEST-tasting liquid medication which I had to take several times a day - and my parents had to put a chart on the refrigerator so I wouldn’t, like, go ask the other one for a dose. I had no idea what it was until I was doing rotations in 1994, and happened to open a bottle of Pediatric Gantrisin, which was discontinued a few years later due to declining sales, and knew immediately from the smell what it was.
I also had the one ear infection that I remember when I was in high school. ZOMG was that painful! I sure do understand why babies are so fussy when they have them.
One especially bad year, when i was in junior high, i caught strep 3 times. I also had two different flus that winter. Fun times.
I was allergic to penicillin, and had to take giant erithromycin pills.
I had an ear infection once as an adult. I don’t recall whether I got antibiotics - I don’t think so, since it was most likely “just” inflammation due to a virus, but I distinctly remember fantasizing about using an ice pick to let the demons out. Likely I got prednisone.
In the meantime, I saw on a CNN crawl that there’s an amoxicillin shortage, although IDK if all the dosage form - liquid, capsule, chewable tablet, and even IV - is affected by this. It did say that there’s an increased demand with all the children showing up with RSV, which while it’s a virus does make children more susceptible to bacterial infections.
This story does go into more detail.