More Ear Issues

Well, poor Harrison has been put through the ringer the past two days. He has had constant drainage from his ear for the past 6 weeks. It would clear up for about 3 days at a time and then just come right back. We found out last Monday that he was growing staph in his ear (which is not uncommon and explains why other antibiotics and drops were not working). He was put on the antibiotic that will kill the staph, however, 7 days later, his ear was still draining. Yesterday, he woke up with a fever and the drainage was worse. So, it was back to the pediatrician yesterday morning. I love our pediatrician. Our appointment with him was at 10:15 and he was able to get us in to see the ENT at 1 that afternoon. That is absolutely unheard of if you have ever been to the ENT at Children's South. If you want to get in immediately, you have to get your pediatrician to call and even then, it is usually a week or so later. Never the same day. Had I called it would have been a month! Poor Harrison needed to get in yesterday.

The ENT gave us three options: admit him to the hospital and give him IV's to kill the staph (which would be torture for Harrison and also very expensive to have to stay at the hospital), invasive surgery which involved putting an incision behind his ear and I swear he said drilling a hole in his eardrum to get it all out (and then sewing it back up), or doing a vacuum of his ear and putting in a new tube with antibiotics in it and taking out his adeniods. He recommended option 3 for now and said he could squeeze us in this morning. Again, I never thought in a million years that this would all happen so fast, but it did. Unfortunately, Joel had to be out of town on a day trip today for work, but having been through this 3 other times, I felt like I could handle it and if anything happened, he would be back within a couple of hours. And, I'm thankful for my mom that came to our house at 6:30 this morning to tend to Hudson and get him to school.

As I'm driving to Children's South this morning at the crack of dawn, the nurse called and said our ENT was sick with the flu. First of all, the FLU?!?? Geez, exposed again. She said we could reschedule or just let a different doctor do it. We were already on the way so I just told them to have another doctor do it. Of course, changing doctors added a whole heap of time to the procedure--why do they have so much paperwork??? Then, Harrison, who is already running a fever and is just a pitiful little baby that can't have anything to eat or drink, starts throwing up in the waiting room. I'm sure all those people around us were freaking out. One really nice mother went and got me some paper towels and helped me clean it up. I promised her that he was not viral at all (at least I hoped he wasn't!). Then, they had the wrong ear written down for the surgery so it took a while to get that corrected because of course they couldn't take my word for it. It had to be checked by 10 different people. And because Harrison was congested and had a fever, we saw 4 members of the anesthesiology team. He was cleared thankfully (with a warning that he may have to be taken by ambulance downtown to Children's if his oxygen dropped--scary!).

The procedure was quick as usual though and he was back in my arms in no time at all. He has been asleep ever since. Poor buddy. I really hope that this does the trick! I'm ready for him to be well! This is a sweet picture of the boys laying in bed watching cartoons, but unfortunately, this is not reality for Harrison--he won't sit still for anything so I know he was not feeling good! And yes, we still wear Christmas pajams around here.