Edie has had a rough month being sick from a cold and two double ear infections practically just a few weeks apart. We have kept her out of MDO for the past few weeks until she is completely over everything. I can not help but think that all of these sicknesses has come from being in MDO. Edie was literally sick once until she turned one, which is when we started her in MDO. I know we can not keep our children in a bubble and eventually they will get sick - but I do hate seeing her feel bad. It is the most helpless feeling when your child is sick and you can not fix it.
One other thing Scott and learned from all of this is you must refrigerate your babies antibiotic. There is a tiny label on the bottle which we did not discover until Sunday night that reads "must refrigerate". Aha! This must be why the medicine is getting darker and darker each day! And to tell the truth - her medicine for her last ear infection I am sure was supposed to be refrigerated as well. Which we did not do. Anyway we panicked and called the pharmacy right away. We learned that 1. It will not hurt Edie and 2. Without being refrigerated it is not effective after 72 hrs!! Poor Edie......no wonder she got another ear infection. The first one probably never completely cleared because the medicine we were giving her was useless.
So we had a follow up visit with her ENT yesterday. He wrote her ANOTHER perscription which we will refrigerate!! And he advised us that Edie would need tubes. I have to say I am torn. On one hand I do not want to jeopardize Edie's hearing, speech and balance in any way. But I can not help but wonder....did the fact that we did not refrigerate the medicine have anything to do with the 2nd round of ear infection? Should we finish this perscription and see what happens? She may do great and never have another one. I know that over 90% of typical and non-typical children have tubes but the thought of making a hole in Edie's eardrum scares me. Dr. Davis's daughter also has DS so we do feel totally comfortable with his decisions because he is so aware of Edie's needs. So I know I just have to trust that this is the best thing for Edie and tell myself tubes are no big deal anyway. Right?
You poor Mommy. Yes, this is a tough one. Isn't being a parent the hardest job in the world? I am pretty confident that if she was going to need tubes, it was going to happen eventually and the medicine had nothing to do with it. I wrestled with it, too. I do feel better when I hear that just about every baby I've run into needed tubes. It is nice to know not everything is DS related. Plus, this is one way you will make her feel better. The ear infections should stop. Although, I admit to using hydroperoxide regularly to keep the wax buildup from Allie's ears and my thought is they will keep the fluid from building up. I really don't want tubes a second time - despite the fact it was an easy procedure. Do what your heart says... if you need to wait to see for sure, I'm sure it won't be a bad decision. Good luck on this one!
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