Infected ears...STILL!

Korben woke up this morning with rosy red cheeks. For Korben, that always means fever. Sure enough, he had 100.3. I was instantly fearful that his ear infections were back, or maybe never went away. He JUST got off 10 days of antibiotics last Friday. Dr. Beene got him in at 10:30 this morning. She looked in his left ear and said it looked really bad, then looked in his right ear and said it looked worse. It made me sick to hear that, even though I was almost expecting it. He has been SO fussy the past couple days that Aaron and I were just positive we were dealing with an incredibly cranky little boy with a bad case of the "terrible 'almost' 2's." Since he had just gotten off his antibiotics, not once this weekend did I think that his fussiness could have come from his (still) infected ears. So, I must confess that I feel royally AWFUL for that.

Dr. Beene referred Korben to Dr. Gwartney to talk about getting ear tubes. He is a well-respected, experienced, ENT here in Fort Smith. I just found out late this afternoon that Dr. Gwartney will be able to see us next Thursday morning at 9:45. I was thrilled to hear that because Dr. Beene warned me that sometimes it may be more like 2-4 weeks before we could be seen.

I am very, very eager to meet with him. Dr. Beene and I reviewed Korben's medical history and it made me so sad to think that Korben has had recurring (or the same, unhealing) ear infections basically since mid July. So not cool! Everyone has told me that when their child got their ear tubes they felt like they had a new child. I know that he will probably still have fussy days, and the occasional toddler tantrums, but SURELY this will help make him feel a whole lot better. I pray that if this is the right thing for Korben, it will be obvious, and we can move quickly to give our boy some relief.

Just last week, I had an ear infection of my own. I woke up in the middle of the night with so much pain in my ear that I wanted to wake up Aaron just so I could cry to him. I didn't...but I wanted to! I started googling things I could do to make my pain go away. I ended up finally falling asleep almost two hours later, after using a heating pad and taking tylenol. I'm kind of glad that happened to me because it showed me why Korben is not sleeping well at night, and why his naps are pretty much non-existent. Lying down makes your ears hurt 100x worse. Now it makes since why he is screaming when he wakes up from his naps, instead of jumping and laughing in his bed. Hind sight is 20/20 I tell you.


I will let you all know how next Thursday goes. In the meantime, Korben is taking a stronger antibiotic for the next 5 days. Hope it does the trick!