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The original was posted on /r/tifu by /u/HopefulForFilm on 2026-03-05 21:53:22+00:00.
Obligatory this didn’t happen today.
Several years ago I started getting terrible sore throats in the winter. The first time it happened, I assumed I had caught strep throat because it hurt so badly. I got a doctor to prescribe antibiotics without a test because I was in the middle of working 70 hour weeks and had no time to go in, so got the prescription via telehealth because I had all the symptoms, down to white spots on the back of my throat (heavily not recommended, do not take antibiotics unless you’ve tested positive for something treatable by antibiotics). I take the meds, the sore throat goes away.
Until a week or two later, it comes back. Go in for a test, test negative, doctors kinda shrug and tell me it should go away on its own. And it does. Until it comes back. All winter, I’m in a cycle of being sick for at least a week at a time with a sore throat. Makes it hard to eat, sleep, forget about exercising or socializing.
And then spring hits and it clears up, and I forget about it.
Next winter rolls around, I’m sick again. When I get sick I start taking photos of the back of my throat showing huge white masses all along my tonsils to show the doctors when I can get appointments.
At some point, in and amongst the various doctors appointments, there starts to be mention of post-nasal drip (mucus from my nose going down my throat and irritating it). I’m prescribed a nasal spray that’s described to me as steroids. I take it a few times, but get scared of shooting steroids up my nose every day, so I abandon it when my throat gets better and don’t start it again the next time I get sick.
I spend two more winters basically out of commission with these constant sore throats.
This year, when I got my first sore throat at the start of the winter, I decided enough is enough, I’m getting this fixed this year even if it means getting my tonsils out. I book in with a telehealth practitioner to get a referral to an ENT, and he asks about the nasal spray I had tried years earlier. He actually explains to me this time that I won’t build tolerance or become dependent on it and gets me to try it for a month to see if it helps.
I didn’t get a single sore throat. After a month I booked a follow up and he said I could stay on it until the spring, then go off it when my nose stops running from the cold and get back in it next winter. For the first time in years I haven’t lost my whole life the entire winter. It feels amazing.
Hoping this post helps someone because I scoured the internet trying to figure out what was wrong with me and something like this could have saved me a lot of suffering
TL;DR: if your throat recurrently hurts, ask your doctor about the possibility of it being post-nasal drip. And if a doctor prescribes you a medication and you’re worried about it, actually ask your doc questions instead of just not taking it