Posts by Frank Rodriguez5

Kate Collins67 said:If we were living maybe 50 years ago, I guess you might roughly call this rheumatic fever.
Nowadays, things aren't quite so straightforward.
Without an EKG, it’s honestly difficult to say for sure, but if you are feeling those symptoms right behind your sternum as part of this whole situation, there could potentially be some changes present. I suppose if someone suspected what I mentioned, they would really need to either rule it out or confirm it; it's just awkward when things remain so inconclusive.

How can I actually confirm if it's rheumatic fever? I mean, is there some kind of rheumatic factor or a specific blood marker that shows it? And with an EKG and an echocardiogram, can they see something through a murmur or something else to tell if something happened?

Because I have an EKG and an ultrasound scheduled soon, so I can finally see... I just don't know what else to do. I've gone through so many tests trying to find a Streptococcus source, and they haven't found anything at all. My AST/ASO levels are still sitting around 1150.

My knees feel hot and painful. And my heart... there's this strange pain. I just don't know how to get the titer down. I guess injections only work if the bacteria is actually in the body, but they just can't seem to find it...

I’m looking for some insight here—my AST/ASO levels are sitting at 1160.
It hasn't budged in three months. I honestly have no idea how long they've been this high... maybe for months, maybe even years, since I've been dealing with recurring strep throat infections for about four years now.

The real issue is that lately (over the last two months), I've been feeling this pain around my heart area. Then, for the past three weeks, my knees have been aching, my joints flare up occasionally, and I’ve been running low-grade fevers around 99.5°F. It all feels like something is happening internally, maybe something rheumatic.

My last bout of strep was back in September. All my swabs come back clear—I can't find any strep anywhere—yet my AST/ASO remains elevated. I'm genuinely terrified that this might be messing with my heart, my joints, or even my kidneys. What should I do? Should I be looking into getting injections or some other way to bring those titers down?