Ear infection

An ear infection is one of those childhood rites of passage that appears to have passed me by. So when Abby woke up crying last night I wasn't sure exactly what was wrong. Thankfully she was there to help me out by screaming "MY EAR HURTS SO MUCH! MOMMMMEEEE MAKE IT STOP HURTING!! IT HURTS! IT HURTS! IT HURTS!" While she alternated between trying to bore a finger into her head and attempting to rip said offending ear off her person. For the next hour she did nothing but scream, begging for help, pleading with us to make it stop. I was ready to take her to the hospital, but Mike being the calm one at the moment suggested that was probably unnecessary. Since Abby wasn't willing to let me out of her sight Michael went and made a call to TeleHealth to ask what we should be doing; which was Tylenol and a Doctor's appointment the next day, but call them back if she hadn't settled down in two hours.

Okay that sounds easy, but lets not forget my child HATES taking medicine of any kind really, but she has a really special hate on for grape flavoured anything. Now my Mom is reading this while snickering to herself and rubbing her hands together with glee because I was also a child who wouldn't take medicine so this can only be poetic justice. Now over Christmas I learned that Abby could be tricked by a dose of medicine in a glass of juice. Last night she wasn't falling for it. So I went back to the medicine cabinet to see what else we had. I must have pulled out half a dozen bottles of grape flavoured pain relievers, fever reducers and cough medicines wondering why in the hell I had them. Whenever Abby hears the word medicine the first thing out of her mouth is; "is it purple?" So really all these bottles are just taking up space.

As it turned out I had forgotten that over Christmas Mom had picked up some Watermelon flavoured chewable Tylenol that I didn't end up opening since I was dosing her juice. Given the option between the chewable pink pills that I insisted were just like her Flintstone vitamins and a shot of berry flavoured liquid. After some gentle persuasion she agreed to try one pink pill (she needed to take three for her weight) and, thank God, she actually liked it and agreed to take the rest. The next hour she spent tossing and turning on the couch, clutching her ear, crying and accusing us of giving her placebos. "They didn't work Mom! MY EAR STILL HURTS!" The hour following that she would sleep for 10 - 15 minutes and then wake up to cry and moan for the same. Finally somewhere around three in the morning, she slept, then I called in sick to work and I slept.

This morning Abby was right as rain, the pain and pressure in her ear gone. Mike went in late this morning to give me a chance to sleep. When he left Maya was back down for a nap, I was asleep in bed and Abby was supposed to lay beside me and quietly watch cartoons. Imagine my shock when I awoke to her speaking to a man in the downstairs hall. Papa had stopped by to check on us and our helpful little Abby unlocked the deadbolt and let him right in. Then she asked him if he'd like to go out for burgers and some beers (very funny story, remind me to tell you sometime), it was 9 in the morning. Nothing against Papa, he knows I love him and was grateful he was worried enough to stop by, but hello I have a four year old unlocking the door without my knowledge.

Me: Abby, what if it was someone you didn't know at the door? Would you let them in?
Abby: Yes.

It goes without saying that this afternoon we had a lesson in "stranger danger" and that she's never to open the door to anyone she doesn't know. That she's never to open the door without asking Mommy or Daddy first.

This afternoon our doctor diagnosed Abby with an ear infection. Originally she wasn't going to treat it, since she figured the worst was over, but taking Abby's heart condition into account she decided to err on the side of caution. Abby is scheduled to have an ECG in March to check the status of her heart. At the last ECG her large hole had healed, but they had found two "pinprick" sized holes that had previously been undetected. Infections can potentially cause a strain on her heart that her cardiologist would like her to avoid, so we came home with a prescription for banana flavoured antibiotics that Abby took without complaint.

In case you were wondering, no Maya did not sleep through the screamfest last night. She was up and content to amuse herself for the most part.



She may have been amused, but I was not.

As for Abby she felt well enough to walk around with a pocket full of uncooked spaghetti. I never really got the whole story about that.