Is Thrush is a Four Letter Word?

Micah's thrush came back.  I'd been seeing signs of that, but they weren't registering with me. The first sign was the chocolaty ring around his mouth. This is a result of the reflux-like symptoms that thrush gives, and that ring is (I'm guessing) stuff that was refluxed up. Or chocolate. I went with the latter because it made more sense. And I really wanted to believe it.

And then he started coughing at night. A lot. I was frustrated that he was starting a new cold when he just got over a month long one, but there's little one can do to ward off colds for Pete's sake. They just happen when they get the notion to happen.

And then on Friday he woke up with yeast spots growing on his tongue. (Since it's a yeast infection, I prefer to call them that. The fact that it's the hospital called it a "fungal growth" is disturbing to me, so I pretend that I didn't hear that.) That's when the clues I'd been seeing all came together and my light bulb finally started glowing. So much to that boy's delight, he got to stay home from school on Friday. He was a little less delighted to go to the doctor, but it's the price you pay for playing hooky from school.

We've been prescribed Diflucan again. The meds he was on for 10 days, and the same meds he was on for 3 weeks straight. Only this time it's in a form where he takes one dose this week and one dose in exactly a week and then he's done. Excuse me for a minute while I sit over here being all skeptical that this time it's going to actually work.

I insisted on seeing the same doctor that had treated him previously because he promised to do a culture if it came back to see if it was really something else we could be dealing with. And he kind of berated me for "wiping off" the spots because actually culturing them rather than just a swipe inside the infected mouth would be far better. I concur with that statement, but laughed in my head at the idea of actually wiping those spots off. Or the idea of not letting Micah eat anything (which is how they "wiped off") until I called the doctor, waited for an appointment time to open up and drove into town. Keeping that boy from eating all morning is kind of like keeping a cold at bay all winter long. It's just not happening.

It'll take a week for the culture to come back, and I guess I'm not really expecting it to say anything other than "yep, it's thrush," but clearly we need to do something about this ever persistent bacterial fungal thing that has grown an attachment to my son. We're about home remedied out, but if you've got some ideas please toss them my way. The Gentain Violet was violently spat back at me, and I haven't been able to pry his mouth open since to get it in there. I was able, however, to stain his lips, chin and cheeks purple while trying. The boy is eating enough garlic to ward off vampires for even his future ancestors. Yet that thrush just keeps persisting.

Silly thrush.

I am incredibly grateful, however, that it seems to be localized in Micah's mouth. We keep hearing that it's highly contagious, and Micah eats and drinks off everyone when we're least expecting it. The fact that nobody else has fungal growth is pretty amazing, right? I'm looking for silver linings here.