The saga of Lewis’ ears is neverending. Now that he can say “ouch” and “hurt”, he sometimes points to his ears and lets us know he is in pain.

That resulted in another (expensive) trip to the doctor last week, where we found out that his most recent ear infection had cleared up, but that he still had fluid in his ears. 

This is extremely helpful information. It gives us some more insight into what is happening in his ears, and that, in turn, gives us more of an idea of what to look out for. 

The threat of tubes is still lurking, and I am starting to feel like it is inevitable. Part of me wonders what the hell we are waiting for. My kid is uncomfortable, he has had antibiotics way too many times, he gets ibuprofen and tylenol every single night…. so what are we doing putting it off?

But the other part of me knows that even a minor surgery isn’t a minor decision. It involves sedation and has its risks. Additionally, there would be no swimming or other fun water related activities until the tubes fell out, since you can’t get water in the ears. Lewis loves the water, and I would hate to turn something fun into something forbidden, therefore making it more likely that he will resist swimming and submerging years down the line when he is allowed to again. 

I know it is 4:45 am and I’m not making any decisions right now, but after being up with Lewis for the past hour and failing to get him to stay asleep when I put him down, ears are on my mind. We are out of tylenol, and I imagine he woke back up because his ears hurt… and that makes it hard not to debate the pros and cons of ear tubes.

I don’t know what the right answer is. We are just following the doctor’s advice, which means a whole lot of doing nothing and a whole lot of  (expensive) trips to the doctor just to peek in the kid’s ears. Maybe I should just buy an otoscope and learn what to look for so we can stop spending $180 just to have the doctor look for us. Then we would only go when there is an infection instead of just fluid buildup.