that strawberry tongue

Jenna's still on her medicines for the strep. She's been doing great on them.

Today I checked her throat outside in the daylight. It still looks like crap. Her tonsils are the size of small boulders. Her pediatrician wants her to see an ENT because she snores and has recurrent strep infections. One thing she mentioned is that they would probably want to do a CAT Scan of her adenoids. (i lost all that plumbing long ago for similar reasons.) I'm reluctant to make the appointment. I don't want to hear them tell us anything about CAT scans or surgery.

So I'm starting to pump the anticeptic mouthwash again, echinacea in her water. If anyone knows of kids' vitamins that actually taste good, please leave me a comment. I've done Flinstones, Rugrats, Bubblegum Vitamins. She gags on all of them... I'm also going to start searching online. Maybe there are some simple procedures these days--laser or something? To deal with this kind of thing. You'd think so, something that can shrink tonsills of kids who are unfortunate enough to have big germ trapping ones.

The part of this that concerns me, in addition to the exhaustion of recurrent strep on MY part, because I think in time she'll outgrow this--say when her throat grows big enough to actually FIT those boulders--is that she had some serious sleep apnea this last episode of strep. One night I slept with my head on her back so I could nudge her when she got silent for too long. The doctor said, that's the strep because her throat was swollen, and since she had a bad sinus infection she couldn't breathe through her nose.

But a couple of the doctors asked, "Has she always been a mouth breather?"

That's what they called me at her age. A mouth breather. I remember the term. I remember wondering, uh, what else are you supposed to breathe through? I remember feeling like I was doing something wrong, this breathing thing. What exactly did they want me to do?

In truth, yah, she does breathe a lot through her mouth, but only when she sleeps. I think it's more out of habbit, because of these stinking sinus infections, than anatomy. Call it instinct. That's what I think. BUT THEN, her daddy does have sleep apnea. I know it's a serious thing, something to be watched.

All of this is to say, I'll be googling up a storm on alternative, new, cutting edge, and less dramatic ways of coping with strep, tonsilitis, and the like. I hear they are less hasty to do surgery these days than they were in our day, so maybe there are new, more advanced, techniques to try, and maybe we should just schedule a visit with an ENT to find out what's new and different.

Ideas, thoughts, web finds, atlanta-area specialist recommendations, and coping mechanisms welcome.