Just What We Need: Another Specialist

Last night I had a visit from my wonderful visiting teachers and we were talking about differences in raising boys and girls. One of my teachers remarked: "Plus, your boys are the ones who get all the problems. The girls are so healthy". I agreed completely. Taylor, who has Sensory Processing Disorder has had to see both a behavioral and an occupational therapist. Kendall, with his congenital heart problems, regularly visits his pediatric cardiologist. And Spencer who has life-threatening food allergies and asthma gets to visit a pediatric allergist. But Lynnsey and Kaya have only ever had to see their regular doctor and usually only then for check-ups.

Until today. I had to take Kaya in for a recheck of her ears since she had an infection a couple of weeks ago. I thought it would be a quick in and out and on with our lives. As it turns out, not only was her ear still infected but so was the other one--and both are severely infected. It started back in October just before Kalen and Kaya's trip to Utah. Kaya had a runny nose and a low grade fever but otherwise seemed fine. But since she was going to be traveling, I decided we'd just get her checked out. It was good that I did because she did have a mild ear infection. The doctor actually debated whether or not to give us antibiotics but since Kaya was going to be flying, she decided we'd better do it. She gave her amoxicillin. When they came back from the trip, Kaya had a bad cough. We let it go for awhile because she had just finished up the antibiotics so we assumed it was just another cold and would go away. It didn't. Another trip to the doctor and she was diagnosed with bronchitis plus her one ear was still a bit red. This time it was Zithromax. We finished that round and her cough improved somewhat but didn't go away entirely. Then a few days after the antibiotics were completed, the cough was back with a vengeance. Back to the doctor we went and we were told she still had bronchitis and that it probably hadn't ever gone away completely. Also, her ear was very infected at that visit. This time she gave us another antibiotic, the name of which I can't really remember. We set up an appointment then for two weeks to have the ear rechecked. We finished up that round of antibiotics and really thought that would be the end of it when we went in today. Nope. With both ears now very inflamed, the doctor thinks it will be best if we visit an ENT to see whether we should continue antibiotics or look at putting tubes in Kaya's ears. They tried to get us in this week but the ENT's office said it would most likely not be until the week after Thanksgiving that we can be seen. So the doctor, not wanting to leave the ear infection untreated for that long, gave Kaya an antibiotic injection that supposedly will tide her over until we can have her seen by the ENT. Poor baby. That shot was a bad one too because it's a thick medication so they have to use a pretty big needle. It took both me and the doctor to hold Kaya down while the nurse stuck that big fat needle in her little leg. The crazy thing about all this is, that Kaya seems well! If she has a fever with it, it is so mild that I don't even notice she's warm. Her sleeping is good. Her appetite is fantastic. She plays and smiles and is generally her normal happy self. You would never know that she had anything as miserable as bronchitis and ear infections going on. Anyway, so I guess she will now get to join the ranks of our children who have to see specialists. Luckily this is for something relatively common and shouldn't have to be a continual thing. I'll update once we get in to see this guy.

And here's a completely unrelated thing. As I am typing this, Spencer has been in here jabbering away at me and he just said: "Mommy, I just always want to live here. But also I want to go to Pennsylvania. That's such a funny place huh? That's because it has the word Pencil in it. That's how come I want to go to Pencilvania." I could listen to him talk all day!