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My family has just survived TJ’s first ear infection. On one hand, we were lucky, as his first birthday came and went without having had one beforehand. On the other hand, his first ear infection was in both ears, making for double the trouble.
TJ loves sticking his fingers in his ears, nose, and mouth, so the first sign of playing with his ear was not very helpful to us. It wasn’t until my husband Tom got home from work one day that TJ’s temperature spiked, and no amount of hugging, bouncing, rocking, or singing could get him to stop screaming. We were lucky that our pediatrician’s office made an allowance for us to come in 15 minutes after closing time, as we didn’t get a call back from the nurse until the office was closing at 5:00.
We were given a prescription for amoxicillin and told told give TJ acetaminophen for the pain. I told myself I wouldn’t be one of those parents who insists on getting antiobiotics for every little bug their child gets, and I wasn’t; the doctor wrote up the prescription without any sort of discussion. At first, I was worried that he might be getting drugs he didn’t need. But that turned out not to be the case.
We ended up back at the pediatrician two days later, when we had seen no improvement in TJ’s sleeping habits or behavior. A quick exam showed that his ears were still quite infected. The doctor wrote a new prescription for Augmentin.
This medicine was slightly less popular with TJ. He’d given us no problem taking the amoxicillin, but he quickly learned to let the new medicine dribble out of his mouth, even when it was squirted in slowly by one parent while being held tightly on an incline by the other parent. Fortunately, he got enough of the Augmentin into his system that there was a noticeable improvement in his behavior within 24 hours. So it turned out that this was indeed a bacterial infection, not a viral one, and the antibiotics were something he needed to help fight that infection.
The infection itself was rather strong, strong enough that the amoxicillin was not enough to tackle it. Augmentin is nasty stuff; it’s harder on the system, and it tastes and smells worse, too. But it worked.
I guess the question of antiobiotics is a tricky one. We don’t want to use antibiotics too often or too much, or they’ll become ineffective. But now I know not to be too anti-antibiotics either, because they may be just the thing that’s needed to cure what ails our little angels.
That’s me: Christina Gleason. I’m a writer, editor, and disability advocate. I'm a multiply disabled autistic lady doing my best in this world built for abled people. I’m a geek for grammar, fantasy, and casual gaming. I hate vegetables. I cannot reliably speak, so I’ll happily conduct business over email or messaging instead.
