A Month of Ear Infections

On the Saturday of Cody's birthday in between lunch and cake Dr. Chris and Nurse Anne took us down to the hospital to see if Uncle Chris could look in Cayden's ear before we spent $100 at the Urgent Care.  Cayden  had been complaining about his ear hurting since the day before when we were on the way up to Provo and was crying at lunch because it was hurting.  Dr. Chris could not see anything with his handy dandy ear looker so Nurse Anne called up to the NICU to see who was on call.  It happened to be a pediatrician and he was nice enough to check Cayden out.  He could not see anything because Cayden's ear was too full of wax.  He told us to go home and clean it out and then come back and he would look again.  After 30 minutes of flushing Cayden's ear with hydrogen peroxide and water we thought we were good.  Well the doctor still could not tell a whole lot but he gave us a prescription for Amoxicillan to fill if the problem continued.   Cayden was still complaining about it on Tuesday so I filled the RX.  9 days later he said it was still bothering him so we went to the doctor here in town who said it was still really bad.  We got 2 new RX's and only paid $150 for them.  Thank you beginning-of-the-year deductible.   Later in the day I took Connor to the same doctor because he had started complaining about his ear the Saturday after Cayden and I had an Amoxicillan RX that we started him on.  His ear infection was not as bad as Cayden's but still not good especially for being on the meds for 5 days.  Plus his blood sugars had been horribly high all week since he had started saying that his ear hurt.  So he also got a $130 RX.  Because Cayden's ear was so bad we went back to the doctor once a week for 2 more weeks and THEN even though the bad infection part was gone his ear did not look the way the doctor thought it should.  We even used an ear cleaner kit a few times a day for a week to clean it out really good.  After the 3rd time to our local doc he sent us up to the ENT in Mesquite.  We went up there on Monday and the ENT used his magic sucky vac to clean out Cayden's ear for the billionth time.  He said there was still an infection in there but wait for it...............and skip ahead unless you want to be grossed out.........................it was a fungal infection.  Ok that is just yucky.  He said it could have happened because of the amount of antibiotics he had been on or that he had gotten water in his ear that never drained out.   He squirted a thick cream in there and said to come back in a week to make sure the infection was gone.  So let's add that all up
3 trips to the local doc for Cayden and 1 for Connor
2 antibiotics for Cayden and 2 antibiotics for Connor
1 antibiotic ear drops for Cayden
1 trip to the ENT and now
1 more trip to the ENT
So much for cutting down on our medical expenses this year.  I feel bad that Cayden has had to deal with this for so long.  He was so good about it too.  Poor boy!
Incidentally I got sick on February 7 and after flushing my ear it got plugged and I could not hear out of it for 2 days.  It was maddening!  I spent numerous times on Friday and the whole morning of Saturday the 13 trying to get it unplugged. Finally about 1pm it worked and I could hear again.  I only had to deal with not hearing for a few days.  Poor Cayden has had to deal with it for over a month.