Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Sanity wherefore art thou?

So all that not sleeping through the night may be based upon one thing - ear fluid. Not the wrong temp, not hunger but that we can't get the fluid out of little man's ears. Since 26 Dec 08 Oz has been on Amoxi, Augmenten and Omnicef. He just finsihed the Omni on Friday. Come Sunday he started waking up in the middle of the night again. The Peds NP we saw last started talking tubes and I started running fast in the other direction.

I'm leary about tubes for a few reasons:

1) Its surgery on an 18 month old.

2) Military Medical has done me wrong quite a few times that I am EXTREMELY gunshy, about letting someon hack into my kid's ear drums.

3) He's so close to 2 where the ear canal (yeah I can say the right word but can't spell it) will start to naturally drop and reduce infections until the ears reach their proper place at around age 4.

4) I don't wanna make this decision by myself

I'm also really tired and loopy over the waking up 3-4 times a night. I'm sure its killing Oz too, but I'm supposed to be the sane one and I feel that sanity slipping between school, work and lack of sleep. I noticed I'm getting more impatient with Oz too and that's not fair - not really. He's waking because his ears are bugging him and its his only form of communication. I'm not a meanie, I know why this is happening but I'm just sooooo tired that I cry for no reason at times. I just want to fix it, to fix him and give him his nights back and probably his days too where he's not being bothered by his ears.

I'm going to go ahead and ask about the consult with the ENT Dept tomorrow while I take him back into the Peds NP. I'd like to try one more thing (well exhaust all possible treatements) before going to surgery. I've read and some have mentioned a long round of antibiotics, like taking bactrim for 6 weeks to see if we finally can't kill off what ever is growing in there.

As for tonight we are running the humidifier (like normal), he took his zyrtec (like normal), no bottle but a sippy for that final drink, sitting up for the final drink and I elevated the one side of the crib (not like he doesnt just turn the other frickin way though). I also tried a granola treatment of place drops of a perioxcide/water mixture and dribbled a few drops in his ear. Its supposed to help clear the infection and relieve the pressure. If I thought he'd hold still we have the uber cool German puppy that has cherry pits in his belly. You microwave the cherry pits and its a warm comrpess. I also read that placing a warm bag of salt (cherry pit puppy equiv) helps to sooth and draw out the fluid so that's where the cherry puppy comes in.

Anyways I sort of feel like tubes are the devil but more and more people say they are heavenly so I don't really know. I just know that something has to happen to help this poor kid get his ears straight and fix his sleeping through the night deal.

4 comments:

Tracy S said...

This is just my story. I'm not telling you what to do in any way. I know that every kid/family is different.

My oldest had tubes 3 times. Yep, you read that right. He had constant problems until he was about 8. It's slowed down some now. His first set was at 17 months. He was on meds continually for 8 months. I decided the tubes were better than constant antibiotics.

My youngest~one set of tubes and it did the trick. He didn't get his tubes until he was 5. He didn't get infections, but he failed his hearing test because of all the fluid. He heard absolutely nothing out of his right ear.

Ultimately, you have to make the decision that is right for you. Just thought I'd give you my 2 cents. Waiting it out to see if Oz gets better can't hurt, but I just wanted to give you a perspective of someone whose kids didn't clear up magically at 2. For whatever reason, their problems actually got worse after 2.

Aaron said...

I had tubes at Oz's age. I don't think you need to be too scared, except for the issues with the quality of your provider.

I still get ear infections. So, don't expect total a cure. If the boy's built wrong that's just the way it is, I guess.

Kbear and Jman said...

Well you know my kiddo's story. 5 ear surgeries later. But I really think if he has PE tubes instead of T tubes he would have been okay. So now he is 8 and still in speech........ and struggling with learning. A lot of that I put that he couldn't hear and it impacted everything. 18 months to 2 years is critical for language acquisition. But I also think you have to make the best decision for you based on what you know at the time. :)

Me.

ABW said...

Here's yet another story. Junior was on antibiotics constantly from December until the tubes were put in, in August. We tried everything else as an option, he was over 2 and no improvement. I was terrified. It has ended up as the best thing we ever did. He immediately had a HUGE improvement in his speech, no more ear infections, it was the saving grace that got me through the second half of the deployment.

Good luck with the decision, it's not an easy one, but in our case it was the miracle I needed! I can sympathize with you as I am in grad school, work full time and have three kids while hubby was deployed. I have no idea how we survived!

Hang in there!