Falling apart

It started about a month ago when Hunter brought home some nasty bug.  It infected all the kids and they all got ear infections as a result of being sick for so long.  Hunter was the worst.  He had a double ear infection that had pus.  Gross!  The incredible thing is that he never even complained about any pain.  I had gone into see the doctor in the first place the day before because Tyler woke up from his nap in the afternoon screaming in pain.  He had a fever and complained of ear pain.  The next day the same thing occurred to Brody.  On our way to the doctor's office Hunter said he felt dizzy so when we saw the doc I asked her to check Hunter's ears as well as Greyson's.  She said Hunter had it the worst.  So they all got antibiotics.  We've been through the first round of them and they're all still sick.  We're on a second round now (all except Greyson, whose right ear is still infected but we're waiting it out a week or two since he isn't acting much different from normal.  I asked the doctor what the risk would be if we didn't give antibiotics.  Would they lose hearing with an infection?  She said that most would clear up on their own and she's never seen a case where a patient had lost hearing from an infection.  So since I still haven't brought Grey in for his 1 year well-baby check-up.  I asked if we could hold off on antibiotics and see if it cleared up on its own and re-check at that visit.  She agreed that it would be fine.  But she did push for Hunter to take a second round since he has it pretty bad and it doesn't seem to be clearing up on its own.  His cough is horrible and his ears look bad (so she says).

Then about a week ago Tyler had a run-in with the bathtub faucet and needed to get four stitches to patch up the gash on his cheek below his left eye.  Poor little guy.  He was such a trooper.  He cried when it happened for about five solid minutes pretty hard.  But when they stitched him up he didn't cry at all.  They gave him a topical numbing ointment that I had to hold on for about 15 minutes (on a cotton ball) and they put him in the straight-jacket-type board with velcro straps that tightly bound his arms to his sides.  They called it a papoose.  He didn't like that very much but he didn't complain or cry.  He just kept watching Wall-E on the t.v.  To add insult to injury he lost his "biko" (blankie) somewhere between the hospital and home and despite a trip back to look for it that night as well as several calls the following days we haven't been able to locate it.  He's pretty sad about that loss.

They're all on the mend now and I pray that I do not have to return to the ER or doctor's office for at least another week.  I've been six times in the last two weeks between the ear infections and the stitches/removal.