Pain Threshold vs. Sensory Input

So. The test result is in, and it turns out DuckyBoy does indeed have strep throat.

Now, I have had strep throat a number of times in my life.

I have a pretty high pain threshold, but strep throat is so painful I become the World's Most Annoying Sick Person. (I'm pretty sure if there was a Guinness category for that, I would win.) It hurts to swallow, and since my body tends to want to do that every few seconds, I am in agony every few seconds.

In fact, when I was a teenager on vacation and got strep throat, I was so annoyingly miserable that my sister strapped her infant into the car and drove us across town to their pediatrician to get me diagnosed and medicated. Oh, that doesn't sound like a big deal? My nephew was the World's Worst Passenger. For every ride, he fussed and cried from the moment he was strapped into his car seat until the moment he was released. She didn't drive anywhere with him unless she HAD TO.

But my son? His only complaint was a stomachache. Apparently, I now know, a common symptom of strep throat. Stomachache? For a throat problem? How would I know to make the connection?? (Especially for a child who tends to eat too much of things like potato sticks or jelly beans.)

That, and he said (around Wednesday), "I feel like I'm wearing my Hawaiian necklace," and on Friday, "I feel like the snake is still around my neck" (some kind of soft-sock OT snake thingy from school he's been talking about).

Your neck tickles, so I'm going to think you ... have strep throat? Maybe next time. This time, I just figured you ... needed your neck washed.

Pretty subtle cues, dontcha think?

But. Put a shirt on him with embroidery on the chest, and he can barely stand it. "IT ITCHES!!!!!" Actually, he's a little more calm about it. "UH! It itches!"

And try to get him to eat a bite of [fill in the blank new food]? "EW! Gag! Hack! Cough!"

Or, say, his sock is on slightly sideways. Kick! Spaz! Flail! General overreaction!!!

Clearly, he feels some things very intensely. Just not the usual things, like, oh, I don't know, tonsils the size of Brooklyn.

Medical Miracles-- Sort Of
And then, joy of joy, how do you treat strep throat? With the chalky taste of amoxicillin, of course! Welcome to my nightmare!

So, the trusty Internet told me I could put it in something like milk or ginger ale, so I put it in a rice-milk milkshake. DB of course does not like to be dictated to how much of something he eats or drinks, so while he likes it and says he can't even taste the medicine, the very idea that he has to drink the whole thing means to him that he Must.Not.Acquiesce.

So Grandma did the best she could, and I will keep trying as best I can, to get enough medicine into him to make the strep go away. It's also a fine line to stress how he needs to drink it otherwise the sickness will not go away, yet not freak out my little thinker/overreactor.

In this part of the scenario, I'm glad to be able to say, "At least it's not hurting him."

Anyway, we had a nice chat about how that tickly-neck feeling is his body telling him there is something wrong with his throat. The kid is making me come up with a whole new way of talking about illness; I can't say, "It's your body's way of telling you it hurts," because it doesn't hurt!

He was very funny at the doctor's office. The doc had to check his stomach and his legs, probably for swelling, and each time the doc would announce which part he was going to check next, DB matter-of-factly said, "That's going to be fine, there's nothing wrong there." And the doctor kept laughing. I guess kids don't usually have so much to say -- they probably trust the authority figure, right? Not my guy. Well, it wasn't that he didn't trust the doctor, he just didn't see the point when everything was fine with those body parts!

He also likes it when doctors pretend to see something silly in his ears, so he asked what the doctor saw. This doctor didn't answer, but DB dealt with it OK and didn't dwell on it, which was good. (I told him I thought I saw a Matchbox car, so maybe that was good enough.)

Kid-Free Weekend Update:
Husband says I became a different person as we pulled out of Grandma's driveway, and I really did feel a weight lifted of not having my thoughts intruded on every few minutes. I'll have to see what I can do to work on that with DB! After all, he IS a first-grader now.