Icky-ness

You all may remember that Jacob used to have chronic ear infections and got tubes put in his ears last August. They told me then that his chance of getting ear infections would be significantly decreased but that if he did get one the icky-ness would drain out through the tube. He hasn't had a single ear infection since then so when I saw this yesterday it shocked the crap out of me.

I can also promise it looked even grosser in person. The red stuff is, in fact, ear wax, not blood. I learned this, much to my relief, when the pediatrician returned my "what the heck??" phone call.

My poor babies have been having such a bad time with sickness lately. Jacob had strep back towards the beginning of April, then Alexander got a terrible cough that I thought was strep related (three separate swab cultures confirmed it wasn't). We ended up taking him to an urgent care doctor when it got really bad over a weekend. He prescribed him an oral steroid and an antibiotic for good measure. Alexander fought tooth and nail not to take either one of them so when we followed up with the pediatrician and she said they weren't necessary, we scratched those pretty quick. Then she prescribed him an albuterol inhaler (his oxygen level was just a tad low) and we had to get him a spacer and a mask.

I don't have a picture of Alexander using the mask
but it looks like this.

Then Alexander started to get better and Jacob took over coughing from there. No fever for either of them, just congestion and a bad, bad cough. It feels like we saw the doctor about 5 times in 2 weeks (I think my emotions may be exaggerating that memory).

Now Jacob's cough is mostly gone but all that post nasal drip led to this gunk draining out the side of his head. And with the gunk, comes the fever. Poor kid was so miserable yesterday. Luckily, one of the perks of having tubes in is that we can treat this infection with prescription ear drops that we already have at home. He takes the ear drops so much more easily than he ever took that dreaded amoxicillan (or any other oral antibiotic they gave us).

Hopefully this means my sweet boys have already gotten everything going around and will be all better at least for a while. Let's say...the summer. No sickness for a whole season. I think that would be a great idea!