Dana, that sounds so horrible. I hope you feel better soon. Gargle all the saltwater.
I get so annoyed constantly seeing other moms putting their 10 months old, 13 months old, 15 month old, 18 month old in a front facing car seat. It's 2015. We know better. Our pediatrician tells us every visit she should rear face. My mom's group is constantly bombarded with posts (all of these women are members of it) with the differences in safety rear and forward facing. I just can not for the life of me understand why you'd put your kid in danger like that....there are plenty of things that parents are divided on or don't believe in, but this one seems pretty obvious.
And people almost always say something, send them a link to recommendations or the car seat company's guidelines or whatever. And they respond "well his legs couldn't go straight in the car" or "he likes it better". Yeah, my kid likes to have ice cream for breakfast better than yogurt and she likes to dive headfirst off the furniture instead of getting down like a human, but I don't let her, because I try to keep her safe. And if you can read, you can see on EVERY SINGLE car seat page/police page/fire department page/hospital page/pediatrician page about car seats, it will tell you that the length of their legs is not an indicator of when they should turn.