Dr. Zibners.com

How to know if your child's illness or injury is really an emergency

articles

Forever Young

I look at Eva and Zoe and I wonder how they will be when they are bigger. I can’t wait to see their personalities (although I think we’ve already got a few clues from The Princess) and what they look like. But I know that no matter how big they get, or how accomplished they may be, they will always be my little babies. That’s just how parenthood works. I know this because no matter how hard I’ve worked, or how much I’ve studied, my own Mom and Pop still see me as a slightly dim young child. At least that is what I gather after the onslaught of messages railing me for ignoring my poor child until her eardrum burst!

In independent emails, each of them asked if I’d never heard of antibiotics. Was I completely unaware of things like mastoiditis, brain abscesses and meningitis? Oh how my sad little baby was made to suffer at the hands of her callous mother! So let me be very clear. A ruptured eardrum from an infection does NOT imply that you are a bad parent. A middle ear infection, called otitis media, is a collection of pus behind the eardrum. Usually a baby will be fussy or irritable, and sometimes they will bat at their ear or cry when lying flat. They can have a fever. Sometimes the eardrum ruptures and releases the pus, which looks yucky but actually helps the pain. In many countries (including the US), the advice is actually to withhold antibiotics in older kids for a few days to see if it will get better itself, which most will. Eva had just had her ears checked Friday. By Monday her fever was gone and she was acting perkier, although not 100%. I had no reason to check her ears again. (And I had no otoscope, which is a problem I’ve already remedied.) But Tuesday morning there was pus all over her head.
So my child will finish her antibiotics and see her pediatrician in the next couple weeks to make sure the hole in the drum has healed up okay. I will probably become obsessed with checking her ears the next time she has a cold which is my own problem (and will probably seriously annoy her). But I want to make it very clear to all of you, if you wake up and your kid has pus and blood running out of his ear, you didn’t do anything wrong. Sometimes it just happens.

Dr. Lara Zibners, Apr 29, 2010

Find more articles like this one:

• Topic:

• Keywords:
• ear pain

Comments

Discuss this article.

No Comments yet.

Commenting is not available in this section entry.