It all started about ten days ago.
"Mom, my ear hurts."
#1 has been quite the culprit this summer, informing me, with stagering detail, of every creak, crack and growing pain her ten year-old body is going through. A little ear pain was just a blip on the radar. I was not about to haul all the kids to the doctor. I have learned through experience, that even if it were an ear infection, our conservative pediatrician was going to tell me to wait a few days and see if the pain worsened or she developed a fever before writing me a scrip for antibiotics, and I would leave empty hand save for a few Thomas the Train stickers and purloined tongue depressors.
A few days later the pain is, indeed worse, so off we go to the doc. An ear infection is diagnosed and antibiotics are acquired. Is it just my pediatrician who does not call in prescriptions to the pharmacy? Because there's nothing better than after having wrestled Little Man into submission in the doctor's office, trying to stop him from playing with the germ-infested toys in the waiting room, than dragging all the kids to the drive-thru Walgreens and either have to keep them entertained in the car while we wait for our meds, or drive home then pack everyone back into car to go get them later on. And of course, there is always an old lady in front of me in her 1988 Oldsmobile paying for her heart medication with pennies.
Forty-eight hours on the amoxicillin and #1's ear is, if anything, worse. Back to the doctor we go. In addition to the ear infection, she also has swimmer's ear. Easy enough, just throw some prescription drops in and slap those hearing-aid looking ear plugs on and all will be well. This time we get the added bonus of entering the store to shop in the horrifying "Ear Care" aisle while waiting for our scrip. I had no idea ear wax was such a problem in this country, as evidenced by the wide variety of products I came across while searching for #1's ear plugs. Walk the aisles of your local drug store at some point, you'll be grateful for not needing products like "ulcerating wound salve" and compression hose.
An additional forty-eight hours later and the ear is improving. Thank God. The pediatrician and I were running out of witty banter and even Little Man had gotten tired of trying to dismantle the scale in his office. My poor oldest couldn't catch a break though, as she was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes that Saturday night, playing outside while H and I hosted some friends for dinner. Or so we thought. Several bottles of wine later, the children are in bed and H and I are cleaning up (read hiding all the bottles) when #1 sleepily staggers down the stairs complaining she's really itchy. She pulls down her pj's to reveal thighs covered in six inch-wide welts. She also has patches on her arms and stomach. These are not bug bites. This is an allergic reaction. I immediately begin to panic knowing neither H or I are fit to drive, picturing one of us winding up in the town paper's Police Blotter or making a humiliating phone call to my in-laws as for a ride. This is why I won't drink when H is in Rio. Sorry kid, Mommy's too drunk to decide whether or not they should operate.
Even in my inebriated state I know Benadryl is the way to go, so I dose her while I call the doc's answering service. I'm sure I'm the last person on earth he wants to talke to at midnight on a Saturday. That has to be high on the list of this you hate about being a pediatrician. Maybe he's just getting into his wife's pants and his pager goes off so he can have a ten minute discussion with some hysterical woman screaming about explosive diarrhea. But since this isn't 1991, it's probably a text to his Blackberry or something. Equally as libido killing though, I'm sure. As the doc pulls his pants back on, he tells me the Benadryl was the right think to do, discontinue the oral meds and unless her throat is itchy, we should be fine.
The next morning, the swelling is almost gone, but some new, smaller patches have popped up. Doc and I talk again. I really feel like I should be Facebook friends with him at this point or at least take him out for a drink. He tells me to add Claritin to the antihistamine mix which works, and we all go to bed hoping this whole nightmare is over.
Monday morning dawns and #1 wakes at 5:30. She has not done this since she was a toddler insistent on driving me to the brink of insanity as I tried to catch a few hours of sleep after nursing her infant sister six times a night. She is quiet and a little spacey, and I notice she keeps wiping her hands on her legs. Figuring it's the Benadryl and all the other shit she's got in her system, I think nothing of it. She has also started shadowing me around the house and if I don't respond to her endless chatter enthusiastically enough she asks me if I'm mad at her. She tells me she's worried about one time three months ago when she wasn't as nice as she could have been to her friend's little brother. Should she call and apologize? Six hours later, she can't walk. Her knee is killing her. What the fuck is going on?
I call the doctor again. I don't even identify myself. "It's me again." I try to stay calm as he tells me the joint pain is a secondary symptom to the allergic reaction and to give her Motrin which seems to help the knee, but he has no explanation for the nervousness and odd behavior other than the Benadryl. she is still nervously trailing me and overly apologizing when she accidentally bumps into her sister or beats her brother at Wii. I go to bed at ten and see her light still on. She is crying, telling me she has to keep writing in her notebook. If she doesn't she feels "weird". She tells me she has weird urges, like she wanted to pump out all the lotion in the bathroom and spread it on her arms. Now I'm really scared. I finally get her to sleep and H and I stare at each other. Has our child gone insane in a matter of twenty-four hours?
Then H has a brainstorm. The ear drops. They are the only constant throughout all of this. We quickly Google the active ingredient. Seriously, what did parents do before Google? When it's three in the morning and I can't remember the right dosage for Tylenol bottle and the label has been destroyed when the bottle was left sitting in a puddle of leaking Triaminic in the medicine bin, I thank God for Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Anyway, one of the symptoms of this antibiotic when taken orally is severe anxiety, depression and obsessive-compulsive behavior. Even though I find no reports of reactions to ear drops, considering I've been pouring it into a hole in her head twice a day for five days, I know in my bones this is the culprit. And this is when I think to myself, this parenting shit is life and death business and who the hell is qualified?
It is paralyzing to think about how your children's lives depend upon you when you are a parent. Yeah, yeah, the feeding, clothing and safety bit is tough, but I'm talking about all this health business. We've all hear stories on the news, about some kid who has Ebola or something and the parents sob to Matt Lauer, "We thought it was prickly heat!" In kindergarten, #1 developed a few weird pimples around a cut on her leg.** I took a wait and see approach. The next day, it was all over her. Guess what? She had a freaking staph infection. What five year-old gets a staph infection? How was I to know? I am a highly educated woman and the doctor told me we had barely caught it in time. What if I was a teen mother living in the ghetto and just rubbed some Vaseline on the sores? Or some 'tussin?** It boggles the mind. And there is no solution to this feeling of helplessness, other than running to the doctor every other day. I did that and it still got me nowhere.
Thankfully, two days later, the drops went in the garbage and #1 is back to her old self, but we had forty-eight more hours of the neurotic behavior and tears. It was terrifying. I asked H to take a day off from work while it was all going down. I anxiety-ate an entire family-sized tub of peanut butter and I only got my first full night of sleep last night. The doctor, of course, does not believe it was the ear drops, but over my dead body will she ever have Cipro again.
I am still shaken by this whole thing. I feel like every bump, scrape, rash and fever will send me running to the pediatrician's office. Perhaps, with some distance, I will return to my formerly confident self.
But for now, I might have to have a coffee date with Doc.
*One would think, with all of these health scares, she was a filthy, malnourished, orphan child.
**Ten points if you caught the Chris Rock reference.
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