Allergies or strep?

It’s sum­mer time here in San Anto­nio, and while that means soar­ing tem­per­a­tures and kids out of school, it’s also allergy sea­son. We’ve writ­ten before about what causes aller­gies and some ways to com­bat them, so I won’t go into too much detail about that here. What’s con­cern­ing is that we’re start­ing to see some cases of strep throat mixed in among peo­ple com­ing in for their allergies.

You can mud­dle through allergies on your own (or we can help you if you’re really mis­er­able), but strep needs extra attention.

How can you tell if you have strep or just bad allergies?

Strep

• Sud­den sore throat
• Sore throat and tonsils
• Painful swal­low­ing
• Ten­der, enlarged cer­vi­cal nodes
• White exu­dates on tonsils
• Fever
• Headache
• Occa­sion­ally nausea/loss of appetite or abdom­i­nal pain
• Occa­sion­ally a rash 12–48 hours after onset of symptoms
• Usu­ally no res­pi­ra­tory or nasal symptoms

 Allergies

• Usu­ally pro­longed dura­tion of illness
• Runny nose
• Sneez­ing
• Itchy, watery eyes
• Nasal dis­charge
• Recurs at a par­tic­u­lar sea­son or with expo­sure to allergen
• Occa­sion­ally cough, hoarse­ness, sore throat (from drainage)

Here at Impact Urgent Care, we have rapid strep tests avail­able that can con­firm our doctor’s find­ings if we believe you have strep. Then, we can pre­scribe antibi­otics and other med­ica­tions if they’re needed. Untreated strep can leave you sus­cep­ti­ble to nas­tier dis­eases, and it’s not a good idea to see if it’ll clear up on its own.

Even if it’s just a sum­mer cold or bad aller­gies, we can help you feel better.

Try out our new online check in sys­tem to beat the crowds. Just look for this

 in the upper right cor­ner of our web­site, and you’ll be auto­mat­i­cally placed in our queue. You can wait at home or any­where you please once you’re checked in online, and our new sys­tem will txt you when it’s your turn!