How to know when you're having a flare

[elephant]

It sounds like a mild flare, but you need to be persistant and find the underlying cause. It also can be an infection too, but I am sure they cultured his throat and nose.

[sue7211]

Yes, they have cultured his throat for strep twice now and his nose for flu. They also did blood cultures a couple weeks ago. All were negative. I just spoke to the rheumatologist and he's going to start on septra. She said it might take 1-3 weeks to see an improvment.

[reb876]

Hi Sue, what do they do when they take a culture of the throat for Strep, reason being I was dx with Strep and all they did was went by the blood results and looked down my throat, 4 weeks later I was in hospital with loss of 88% kidney function, before strep it was ross river, rubella, parvovirus B19, arthritus, and gout, took a year to finaly figure it out it was wegs.

[drz]

A check for strep is just a swap of back of throat which is determined to be either negative or positive.

[Sangye]

That's the quick-strep test, drz. If it's negative and they suspect strep they generally do a throat culture at the same time because the quick test isn't 100% accurate.