Wednesday, July 05, 2006

4th of July musings - ears, ears, more ears

It was pretty good 4th in the grand scheme of things. We had a little BBQ (with a slight mishap halfway through - thank god for the broiler to finish the cooking process). S and T made their way to fireworks later in the evening while Francesca and I laid low. Francesca was understandly beat - she had a rough time of it early yesterday due to antibiotics - she basically purged the entire content of her stomach in her car seat and on my lap yesterday a.m. as we were leaving the grocery store (it was DISSSGUISTING - try driving home in puke-soaked shorts - not a pretty sight). I've been beating myself up about the whole ear infection thing. It doesn't help that the ENT is really good at serving up a healthy dose of guilt with every recommendation she doles out. She honestly said to me during our initial visit "you could give her one more round of antibiotics, but after that you' d pretty much be considered a bad mommy', and then this gem (after then pushing the proverbial 'last round of antibiotics before I become a bad mommy' on me) "boy if it were my baby and she were hurting i'd want to get her on antibiotics right away". ARGGH! I caved and scheduled tube surgery for early August, and even accepted the prescription for antibiotics - but after yesterday's puking incident and her terrible diaper rash I stopped giving it to her. I remain hopeful that we can find a way out of this earache nightmare without the tubes, but it sure is hard keeping the faith in the alternative treatments. I've basically imposed a one month deadline on the whole affair - if the infection doesn't resolve in the next month and the fluid doesn't drain we're going in for tubes. I have so many mixed emotions about the whole thing and I don't know why I'm so skeptical of conventional medicine - and then equally skeptical of alternative medicine. Maybe I just need to accept the fact that she need tubes and move on. But what if there were a way to solve this naturally? Without hocus pocus? Like acupuncture and dietary change? Fingers crossed.