Ear trouble

I postponed and cancelled Sam's specialist appointments twice because he seemed to be fine after stopping daycare. Once or twice though, I thought I smelt something sweet coming from his ears. To make myself at ease and think maybe we should try daycare again, I decided to keep this Wednesday's appointment. Am I glad that I did.

Wednesday was a busy day - I enrolled Lara at the 'big school' in the morning and I had to work that night (from 9pm for 4-5 hours). The appointment didn't worry me as I thought it would be a walk-in-walk-out, confirm-everything's-fine sort of thing, but I was totally wrong.

Firstly, the appointment was not made at the best time - it was booked 3 months ago at a time I thought Sam would most likely to be up, but 2pm now fell in the middle of Sam's only day sleep. Secondly, my plan of letting Sam have a short sleep in the pram beforehand didn't work, so he was very tired at 2pm. Then the doctor was running late, so Sam was over-tired by the time we saw the doctor at 2.45pm (so was Lara after she played 'jump from the cushions' in the playroom with her friend who happened to be seeing another doctor at the same surgery). I was tired too from stopping Sam break anything in the surgery, sucking on door stops, opening drawers and bumping his head on glass doors that I was very glad when Sam's name was called. I went through the motions of explaning Sam's past recurrent ear infections and how he was fine after no daycare for nearly 3 months and answered routine questions "Do you have any conecerns about his hearing?" "No" "Does he sleep alright at night?" "Yes he sleeps through every night" and so on. So I was shocked when the doctor told me Sam has glue ear, and that he probably can't hear me very well!

The short story is Sam is on bactrim (antibiotics) and Prednefrin Forte eye drops (on Sam's nose as it has the same ingredient as the nose drop without the sting) for a month then we will see if the condition improves. If not then surgery might be required (ie grommets). The 'glue' in his ear needs to be cleared or drained so it doesn't hinder his speech ability in the future.

I've been reading information about glue ear apparently it's very common, 1 in 3 Australian primary aged kids have it. The risk factors are : being with lots of kids (tick when Sam was in daycare), allergy (tick, Sam has eczema, quite bad sometimes) and being a boy (tick). Luckily Sam doesn't seem to be bothered by his glue ear so far and is generally very active and happy. Hope his condition improves in the next few weeks.