Bad...and worse!

Warning! This could gross you out. For all of you out there who say blogging is not good because it paints an unrealistic picture of family life making everything look perfect....well check this story out.

Conner began to complain his ear hurt on Thursday a few weeks back but said he didn't need a doctor he was fine (stupid mom). By Saturday night he was begging to go to the Dr. and of course it was the weekend. On Monday morning we took him first thing to the Dr. and if you look close and you can't see it great in this picture but the front part of his ear and face were swollen at this point. We took him to a local Dr. to have his ear checked because how hard can that be to treat right? Dr. said it was the worst swimmers ear he had ever seen and that the canal was pretty much closed it was so swollen. I told the Dr. we were suppose to go to Lagoon the next day and would he be okay. Dr. said that he wouldn't feel great but keep it dry & put a vaseline covered cotton ball in the ear if we went on a ride because one of the most important things to heal the ear was for it not to get wet. He gave us drops for the ear and sent us on our way!

Yay Lagoon Day! Conner woke up and said his ear was killing him and he didn't think he could make it. Chris offered to pick him up at 4:00 if he wasn't feeling well and since we weren't even getting there until noon he decided to go. He seemed to me to be having a great time but when Chris called at 3:30 to see if he needed to come get him and Conner was all over going home. Chris got him home let him rest, took him to dinner, then left him home while he went to coach his team. When he got back at 8:30 Conner was miserable but seemed to settle down after a bit.
Me and the kids get home at midnight and by 1:30am in the morning Conner is screaming in pain and kicking his legs he's so miserable. I finally decide I'd rather pay the money because I can't stand to watch this any longer and take him to the Emergency Room. The Dr. there says no drops have been able to get into the ear because it's so swollen and decides to put a cotton wick in his ear canal to keep it open and puts Conner on Lortab also giving him numbing drops for the ear. I'm ticked because the 1st Dr. told me the ear was swollen shut and should have known the drops couldn't get in there.

We do a whole day of medicine again like the Er doc told us to and Conner can handle the pain but the ear is just not getting better so the next morning he wakes up and his ear looks like the picture below... you got it full of blood and pus that's drizzling out of his ear and down his neck. I finally decide I've had enough of incompetent doctors and head back to our Spanish Fork Pediatricians.

Dr. Bennett took one look at this and said uh I'm going to get really aggressive today and I hope you don't mind. He had Conner lay down and cleaned out everything in that poor little ear. Next he took fungal and bacterial biopsies to send off. He then tried to test the ear drum to see if it had a hole in it but with all the infection he couldn't get the results on that. He gave me a curved syringe and told Conner to bathe twice a day and I needed to squirt water into the ear while he was in the tub to wash everything out. He gave us fungal drops and more of the original drops and told me to alternate them every hour. He then gave Conner more Lortab and told me to make sure he got that every 6 hours with Motrin on top of it and not to miss a dose and that this is painful beyond belief. He also put him on an adult dose of Augmentin and probiotics.
We went through another weekend and on Monday Dr. Bennet called with the results that Conner had Staph in his ear. He couldn't believe that Conner was actually doing better. Anyway he's doing good and we need to take him in next week because he's still not sure that Conner doesn't have a hole in his ear drum. We are keeping our fingers crossed!