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A Victory of Overspecialization
Mar. 19th, 2017 06:31 pmOne of the puzzlements (idiosyncrasies?) of my life is that I've never gotten strep throat. I've wondered about it (with mostly relief) whenever friends have talked about their battles with the common dread illness.
Mystery maybe solved: I perhaps get strep throat an average amount but am almost symptom-free because my immune system takes on the wildly outclassed bacterium with gleeful dread fury.
Basically, the majority of my household has come down with strep in the last week, while I have simultaneously had a sore throat with zero other symptoms. No fever, no white nodules, no aches, no swollen glands. Just tightness around the back of my mouth, where it was red; I couldn't feel it if I took 400mg of ibuprofen a couple times a day and periodically sucked on cough drops. I was kind of worn down and headachy, but that was from caffiene withdrawal because I'd swapped out my usual coffee for herbal tea. I'm already pretty much back to normal. No need for antibiotics.
I can't prove it was strep, since it never got bad enough to be worth the throat swab. But odds are good it was. Which opens up the possibility there have been other, perhaps even milder strep experiences I have completely ignored in my past - that my mutant factor is a dud, but a convenient one.
Mystery maybe solved: I perhaps get strep throat an average amount but am almost symptom-free because my immune system takes on the wildly outclassed bacterium with gleeful dread fury.
Basically, the majority of my household has come down with strep in the last week, while I have simultaneously had a sore throat with zero other symptoms. No fever, no white nodules, no aches, no swollen glands. Just tightness around the back of my mouth, where it was red; I couldn't feel it if I took 400mg of ibuprofen a couple times a day and periodically sucked on cough drops. I was kind of worn down and headachy, but that was from caffiene withdrawal because I'd swapped out my usual coffee for herbal tea. I'm already pretty much back to normal. No need for antibiotics.
I can't prove it was strep, since it never got bad enough to be worth the throat swab. But odds are good it was. Which opens up the possibility there have been other, perhaps even milder strep experiences I have completely ignored in my past - that my mutant factor is a dud, but a convenient one.
