hello,
I am a 24 year old male and I seem to have a problem with my throat from time to time. I have had a sore throat for almost a month now. It started with a severe cold. That cleared up in about 1 week, but the sore throat came back a few days later and has persisted ever since. I have no other cold symptoms now. I would say the pain is rather severe, similar to the sore throat you would have at the worst point of a cold or flu. The pain seems to extend down into my throat at times, and sometimes even seems to involve the soft pallate in my mouth. It is typically only painful at night or in the early morning and oddy enough, the pain seems to switch sides almost daily. Its never my entire throat.. One day the pain is very clearly on the left side, other days it is clearly on the right side. It also seems to involve my ears / eustachian tubes, because my ears often click when i swollow.
I was recently treated for an ear infection with a z-pack (antibiotic). This ear infection happened after the initial onset of the sore throat / swelling.
When looking into the back of my throat, I can see that my airway is VERY much smaller than it normally would be (swelling) and it appears to be from my tonsils. I also notice sometimes that there can be a white patch on one side, and tonight i noticed a somewhat red / bloody spot on the other side. I was in the ER recently for heart problems and they did a strep test, but it was not my normal hospital and I have a feeling that even if it were positive, I would not have heard about it.
The other problem, (and this has happened before) is that when this swelling occurrs, i develope very bad snoring / sleep apnia problems which seems to only irritate my throat even more. About 2 years ago this same sore throat problem happened, and I developed sleep apnia to the point of being prescribed a sleep study a was given a CPAP. My doctor refused to even acknowledge that it might be my sore throat. When the throat issue cleared up on its own, the snoring and apnia went away immediatly. I had kaiser at the time and i switched and had to give the CPAP back. That was ok though because i no longer had a problem.
Now that my throat is sore and swollen again, I am back to the sleeping issues and I havnt had a good nights sleep in about 3 weeks. i wake up groggy and tired every day. Im depressed and quite frankly very zombie like.
No one ever seems to believe me that there is something wrong with my throat. Im going to try to make an appoinement tomorrow to be seen AGAIN. I have never seen an ENT specialist about this.
At this point im very worried about rheumatic fever as result of untreated strep, as I already have some serious heart issues.
Any thoughts? Would a tonsillectomy be a possible solution? More antibiotics?
I should probably also note that i quit smoking about 3 weeks ago too. i dont know if that could have anything to do with it. i hear that there can be some rough complications in your throat and lungs at first.
Thanks for reading!
Im desperate.
Sore throat for almost 1 month now 
