A Boy and his Ears

On January 3, C was diagnosed with his eighth or ninth ear infection. This time I agreed to go "back to the beginning" and we tried amoxocillan again. This time at a much stronger dose, and twice a day.

Wow does it make a world of difference when C can actually HEAR what is being said around him.

For the first time in...ever... C is actually trying. Trying to say new words, trying to mimic, trying to communicate what it is that he needs and wants. My favorite is when he says "D help! Let's pay."

Or when he tells me to "shh! qiet Mommy!" as he spies on his brother through the window.

About half way through the antibiotics, I noticed a huge improvement. Among the first "tricks" that he learned (finally) was his body parts. Head, belly, feet, ears are among the his favorites to point out.

Along with nose.

And mouth.

Today, C had his hearing test, which we were told was needed before an ENT would even consider seeing us. However, thanks to C's amazing doctor we have an appointment bright and early on Friday. Before we had even had the hearing test. Which I am happy to say C passed, even with the beginnings of another ear infection in his left ear. This poor boy can't catch a break, but I'm hoping the appointment on Friday will help with moving us in the right direction.

Appendi-what?

Wow, not blogging for over a week has felt pretty weird. I know I've done that before, but I've been on a roll lately and something threw a kink in it. Not that I didn't have anything to say, because I did.  I could have told you how I am now another year older and that day was so much better than it was last year, all because of the attitude of those around me (including myself). As D put it, it was an awesome day. Or how we were thisclose to getting a dog for the boys, but in the end had to back down because we wanted to make sure we were more prepared (financially) and the boys were a little bigger and more responsible with their things. I'll miss you Sasha.

So I'll re-start my blogging this month with the not so great. D and I got the flu. It was bad for me, but horrible for D. It made my heart sad to have to watch (and hear)him...vomit his little heart out while begging me to take him to the doctors.

Anyone who knows D knows that he HATES doctors. With a capital H. Unless of course the "doctor" is his daddy. The boys' received a Mickey Mouse doctor kit for Christmas and it was put to good use that night.

Thank goodness for Kel, because he had to take over main parent duties that night as my poor stomach could not handle it. So Kel also had to take care of me while he was taking care of D. Throw C into the mix, and it was a tough night for Kel. (Thank you Baby!)

Yesterday, I finally gave in and took D to the doctor. He's still been complaining of a stomachache, his eating is still poor, and he's just all around not good. His weigh in proved it. At 36.4 pounds (thirty first percentile) and 42 inches ( fifty second percentile), my buddy is one skinny string bean.

I thought it'd be a simple check up, but we had to wait for D to pee in a cup. It turns out, that the doctor was worried about appendicitis. Which never even crossed my mind. Even though it should have, because I had it when I was in high school.

After forty five minutes (we had to wait for D to pee in a cup remember?) the doctor finally came in. With a mask over her face, completely freaking D out. He didn't want to go anywhere near her, and tried to hide behind me the entire time. She had to turn around, with her hands in the air, three times before D finally accepted the fact that she wasn't carrying any secret shots to give him.

Ears. Great. Throat. Great. Belly. Not quite sure, as she didn't say anything after checking it. The final test was helping him of the exam table. D was asked to jump of the stool, and although he was not in the mood, he did. And passed the appendicitis test, as he didn't double over in pain clutching his side when he landed. So an hour later, and we know now that D is dehydrated and just has a bad case of the stomach flu.

We've been trying to beat it. However, it's taken a lot longer than I (or D) would like. It's been an off and on thing, where one minute he's playing and happy and the next he is holding his stomach and asking to go back to the doctors.

I will be happy when my little buddy gets over this.

And goes back to this.

Thankful Tuesday

It's 12:41 AM and I should be asleep. Bedtime was over two hours ago, as tomorrow (today?) we have things to do. Places to go, people to see, and hopefully a trip to the park if the weather cooperates.

But I'm still awake because one certain little sick boy has been crying off and on in his sleep. Each time I think he's actually awake, I find him under his favorite blanket, clutching Mickey in one hand and an extra binky in the other like they are his life lines. C is sick, and has been over the weekend. Fevers and side affects to the antibiotics have made him a grouchy boy when it comes to sleep and resting. During the day he's bouncing off the walls one minute, screaming at whomever did something wrong the next. For the most part, C is happy during the day playing with his cars. But once night falls, all bets are off.

So today I am thankful for this

and the relief that it gives him during the night so that he can try and sleep comfortably.

Tomorrow (Today?) we go back to the doctors for a follow up. Hopefully she'll be able to make C more comfortable and tell me where my ENT referral is.

{Flashback Friday}

This post was supposed to be up yesterday, but then life happened. C got his EIGHTH ear infection of the year and we spent all of yesterday snuggling and last night in the emergency room. As the doctor put it, I brought in one child and took home a completely different one. C was lethargic (from hardly sleeping in twenty fours hours), irritable (God help us if I put him down), and had a fever (he was not happy with the nurse who took his temperature).

See those pink cheeks? My poor baby.

The doctor took a look into one ear, declared it extremely red with fluid behind the ear drum and then looked in the other, and gave it the same diagnosis, and C barely even moved. In the two and a half hours that we were there, C slept for ninety five percent of the time. With his temperature and the state of both ears, for the first time ever we got the antibiotic shot. I was nervous, because C has never had anything with penicillin (that I'm aware of) so I didn't know how he'd react. Thankfully, I knew the nurse who gave him the shot and he made sure that C was as comfortable as he could be before he injected him.

Since the Tylenol didn't touch his fever, and he got a small rash around the injection site, they kept us for awhile so that they can observe C and give him some Motrin. The rash went away after about twenty minutes and the Motrin brought the fever down by .2 degrees so they said we could go home and just watch him to make sure the fever continued to go down. Which it has, although it hasn't gone away completely.

Today he has a little more energy but he still has a fever. And the shot last night made him have diarrhea this morning. At least that's what I'm blaming it on. Either way, not fun. I just want my littlest better. Kel and I have been discussing tubes since November, when C's doctor said that she would send me a referral for both an Audiologist and an ENT. I think last night has put us on the same page in that we want C seen as quickly as possible. I've been waiting almost a month now for the referrals to come in the mail so when we are back at the doctor's office this week for C's follow up I will bug them again about it. 

Anyway...

This was Christmas 2008.  Our first Christmas in our new apartment, D's second Christmas, and his last Christmas as an only child. It was a quiet one, spent with family on both sides. But D loved it. He loved his Elmo DVDs and his Elmo cars. The lights were a hit, he had fun putting on his ornaments, and he actually tried to open his presents. We spent most of the day at home with Aunt B, and had dinner with Poppy, Gigi, and my family at their first Annual Clark Ugly Christmas Sweater Party.

It was a simple Christmas, just how we like it.

A Sick Buggy is a Grumpy Buggy

Poor C. He just can't seem to catch a break. For almost two months now he's has been battling one thing after the other.

February 25 started a five day fever spree. Granted, for the most part they were low grade fevers, but if you look at his pictures in my previous post, you'll be able to see just how miserable he was. I thought it was teething, since he was due for some molars, but after a week and a half of sleepless nights and an exhausted, crabby toddler Kel and I decided that enough was enough.

March 9  I took him to the doctor's and found out that he had an ear infection in both ears. No fun. Also explained the sleep changes, the retraction in speech, and the dwindling eating habits. I felt bad that I waited so long, but at least we were taking a step in the right direction and on our way to getting our Buggy better.

April 6 I took him back to the doctor's because he started his screaming wake up calls again that week. I tried to go back to the same doctor's office that I took him to in March, but they didn't have any available openings that week. So off to Urgent Care we went while D had an impromptu "Take your Son to Work" afternoon with Kel. After a little over an hour of waiting and twelve minutes with the doctor, we had another confirmation of an ear infection in both ears. We were prescribed a stronger dose of antibiotics and told it should clear up in a week.

The first antibiotics C was prescribed was Amoxicillin. It didn't even touch the infections that he had. So Dr. L prescribed a five day treatment of a stronger antibiotic called Zithromax. C took the medication from the Wednesday he went to the doctor through Sunday, along with a pain reliever, and again showed signs that he was on the mend.

Well except for the rosy red cheeks, but they've been around for so long that sometimes I think it'll be his permanent color.

Until Tuesday night rolled around.

By Friday I was at my wits end with all the side affects that are associated with a lack of sleep and on the verge of calling my mom to see if she could take him for the night until I remembered two things. One , she was out of town for the weekend for my sister's volleyball (Go R!) and two, there were two "wittle littles" at the house who were probably already keeping her up at night as they continued their transition to formula. So with that plan out, and no real back up plan in mind, I decided that we would just tough the weekend out and wait until Monday to see if he needed to go back to the doctors.

Isn't the saying something along the lines of "The best laid plans often go awry"? (Feel free to correct me here if I'm wrong)

Friday morning was decent. He ate some , not enough, but some of his breakfast before deciding it was time to play and had an okay nap. Friday afternoon was the same. Friday night around 6:30 pm he was just... done. Nothing could console him, and every little thing pissed him off, for lack of a better term. I picked him up and he felt like a sauna. While I took his temperature (102.3!) he was rubbing his ears and trying to get away. It was as he was staring at me with his "sick eyes" as my mom calls them, that I noticed his nose start to bleed. It wasn't a lot, and it was most likely just a scratch on the inside of his nose from one of his numerous attempts to pick all the snot out, but it scared me.

So, again, off we went to the Urgent Care to see what else could be wrong with my Buggy. We arrived five minutes to eight and there was only a few people in front of us. Two ladies whom I didn't know their story, a Hispanic man who did not speak English, and a little girl who had smacked the back of her head on the corner of her living room table while bouncing on her bouncy ball. I hadn't been sitting down for more than ten minutes when two of the four people were called to the back. I remember thinking to myself that with the rate this was going I should be home in an hour or so.

Boy was I wrong.

As I heard the woman at the front desk state to anyone who asked, the Urgent Care did not take appointments and the wait depended on what you were being treated for. Understandable, but when I watched a lady with a dog bite, a man with symptoms of a heart attack, and another man with some type of... boil, I guess you could call it, on his leg from an injury that happened over eight days prior get called to the back before my crying-so-hard-he-conks-out-for-forty-five-minutes, waiting-longer-than-they-were toddler gets the call... well needless to say I was frustrated. Well minus the guy with symptoms of a heart attack, I was not frustrated with him or the hour it took for the doctor to determine that he was having a heart attack and she needed to call an ambulance because the severity of the condition was out of her league at the tiny Urgent Care. Once he was gone, I thought that C and the little girl would be first to get the call back since we were here before the other two and C was still being pitiful . Again I was wrong, as a dog bite, boil and possible head concussion are deemed much more severe than a measly common ear infection. Even though said ear infection resided in an almost eighteen month old who was so hot from his fever, so tired from the last week of sleep disturbances, and in so much pain that his cry was making one of the other women tear up with him. And no it wasn't me.

We were the last to be seen. At 9:50 pm. And the office had been closed since 9. But it's ok, I would have waited as long as it took for C to be seen. When we were finally taken back, the nurse didn't weigh him since he'd been there nine days before. Temperature check told us that he was now at 101.4 and then the nurse left us to settle in until the doctor came.

Which took another fifteen minutes.

But she was so nice. C loved her and she seemed to actually WANT to know what's been going on with my Buggy. Not the quick check of the ear, another prescription, and out the door kind of doctor. She made faces and got C to laugh so she could check his throat (no easy feat). She listened to me while I told her about the new, and old, symptoms that C has been having over the past two months. And she made me wish she wasn't an Urgent Care doctor so I can make her the boys regular doctor when she said that Strep is going around so, although it is unlikely at his age that he'll have it, she'll swab and send it out to verify (negative!). She also listened to his lungs to make sure the fluid hadn't started to go south (it hadn't). Two things that may seem common and normal things for a doctor to do, and should not make me so giddy, but two things that not even his doctor had done (yes I am aware that we need a new doctor).

And this time she insisted that he get re-checked in two weeks. And prescribed me a stronger antibiotic that she knows will help but was very reluctant to give due to the side affects. Which for Buggy was pretty severe diarrhea and an even worse diaper rash.

Like I said, my Buggy just can't seem to catch a break.

But on day two of being on the antibiotics I was the recipient of a day full of smiles, giggles, and laughs. So I will take the side affects and beat them. Tons of Desitin, petroleum jelly, and baby powder has kept the rash in check and today (day three) the diarrhea has subsided. So we will take it one day at a time and hope that this latest round of antibiotics will work it's magic and get rid of the infections once and for all.

Ear Infections and not so great doctors

Well I finally took C to the doctor's on Wednesday. He's been in such a funk for the past two weeks that I thought it had to be more than teething.

We just got a new insurance starting March 1. I was really sad that we had to leave our old insurance because I absolutely loved the doctor at Kaiser (well technically I think she was a nurse practitioner). She was really warm and actually seemed to listen to any concerns that I had. She could get D to laugh (he's such a tough crowd) and C to sit still (he's such a wiggle worm.) Dr. F we'll miss you!

Wednesday I decided that I was going to just take C in. Fevers, loss of appetite, tugging on ears... this was all going on too long for it to just be teething. So I called the first doctor I could find on the insurance website and made the appointment.

When I got there, I noticed that there wasn't much for a toddler to do. Tons of magazines and books for the older kids and adults, but just a bunch of stuff to be torn up by the little hands of my sixteen month old. It took about twenty to thirty minutes for us me to fill out all the paper work and get verification that we were eligible for the benefits. During that time, D sat in a chair and read his book while C tried to sneak out the door, climb on top of tables, tear up magazines, and flirt with the lady at the front desk.

By the time they called our name I was ready to just go home. We walked to the back, C stood on the scale like a big boy (twenty six pounds with all clothes on and chunky shoes) and we got ushered into a small room on the left. I told the nurse his symptoms, she took his temperature (no fever at this time!), and left. All in under two minutes and without looking at me. Five minutes of waiting with a squirming C and a crabby D and Dr. G walks in. Introduces himself, looks in C's ears, declares that he has an ear infection, and tries to walk out the door.

Wait a minute! I have more questions and concerns for this little guy.

I ask him to check out C's soft spot to see if it's closing properly. A few good pushes on said spot, declares that it'll close by the time C turns two, and tries to head for the door again.

Wait a minute I have another question!

Can you please just feel my son's skull to make sure the bumps I feel are considered "normal" bumps for his age. C loves to climb and run and often falls on his head. Kel and I felt that he had one good sized bump on the top right side of his head, over his ear. So of course its a concern. Again, one (not so good) once over around C's head and he said, "Yup all is normal. Everyone has knots in their skull. Now let me go get that prescription for you and get you guys on your way."

Very condescending.

I didn't even try to bring him back with anymore questions. I just let him go thinking at least I will get some antibiotics for the infection and just bring it up with the actual pediatrician at the practice.

Whom I will insist I see at C's eighteen month appointment. Which of course I can't schedule until the week of his eighteen month birthday. Office practice apparently.

Even though he left much to be desired, at least Dr. G gave me the medicine to bring back my happy Buggy. I am also grateful that this has only been C's second ear infection. Much different than how D was.

Is He Sick or Is He Teething, That Is The Question

Today my Buggy was NOT feeling well. The only thing that set me off that something might be wrong was that he was super sleepy over the past two days and extra cuddly.

I mean he stayed in my lap for over an hour without trying to get up.

And took not one, but two three hour naps.

And still went to bed early at 7:30.

What sixteen month old does that?

So I took his temperature and it read 99.8. Not too high, but this is the first fever that he's had in a year. He's been my healthy baby (D has had to many ear infections to mention) so this was a surprise for me. He took his naps and each time woke up with bright red cheeks that stayed that way for about two hours from when he woke up. It was like someone had slapped him repeatedly.

So we spent the day indoors ( a hard thing for C but made necessary by his fever and the rain) snuggling, reading books, making forts, playing with D, and watching a few of his favorite shows. Hopefully tomorrow he'll be back to his normal self.