By the time his ear infection got better, it was 4 different courses of antibiotics and 40 days later.

I’ve taken him to the doctor’s 5 times, and he’s been eating so little ever since being on antibiotics and lost so much weight. He was born a small baby and now barely at 10% of the weight percentile compared to kids his age. A couple of times during the antibiotic courses, his fever would come back, and almost always on the weekends, so I took him in for urgent care. Urgent cares were generally helpful, but sometimes I wonder if we were making the right decisions switching out antibiotics for another one, then another one… amoxicillin, z-pack, Keflex, cefdinir… then back to z-pack…thank god no Rocephin shots again… I’d rather not be such an expert on pediatric antibiotics.

I tried to call other doctors for a second opinion, for why his ear infection is so resistant and recurring. For some reason, doctors were reluctant to take on new patients when they are sick, and even more so for giving second opinions. I guess it was for liability reasons.

The last time we were in the doctor’s with a fever, I thought why the heck just isn’t the antibiotic working! Doctor told me to lean over to show me something — he showed me the back of his mouth, and all the big blisters were right there. He said he doesn’t have an ear infection, but had hand-foot-mouth disease instead. How disturbing, was I supposed to look, by myself?! And then I realized yes, I should have known!

Doctor referred us to the ENT specialist, and said if we had one more ear infection within the next 6 months, we’d have to have an ear tube. “it’s a very quick procedure”, doctor said. After some internet search I learnt it’s a full-body anesthesia procedure. Please no thank you. I was definitely not looking forward to that.