Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Damn You Particle Board!


Well, I guess particle board doesn't count as wood. (See the second entry on my gratitude list from yesterday). I knocked on my little Ikea desk and, oh, maybe an hour or so later my daughter was in excruciating pain from the most sudden onset ear infection symptoms known to man-kind.

You see, she was playing downstairs - watching “Barbie and the 12 Dancing Princesses” which is like a little dance class for her. It’s so cute to watch her attentively watching the animated ballerinas and follow their every move. She’s so adorable. But, I digress. Anyway, she is playing downstairs, watching her movie, and coloring and she brings up a beautiful picture for me that she colored. She had rolled it all up to be a special surprise for me to open. “Close your eyes, Mommy. Close them. Cloooose them. Cloooose them. Now, Open Them!”. This is one cute little kid, I'll tell you.

Then she asks to do some “magic painting”. So I get out her magic paint book and she sets to work on that. Everything is great and she is happy-go-lucky. Once she finished her painting she got up to go see her Dad in the living room.

“Come on, Jamie” he says, “get some clothes on and we’ll go shopping”.

Jamie starts crying. (Hmmm. That’s weird. Guess she doesn’t want to go shopping.)

“I don’t wanna go!!” she screams.

“Jamie!” I say (with my `shocked at such horrible behaviour' Mommy voice), “Go get dressed. We are going shopping”.

“I don’t wannnaaa goooo! My ear hurts”. (Hmmm. That’s an unusual thing to say to try and get out of going shopping.)

We asked her if she just banged her ear. She yells “No!” I look in her ear and it isn’t even red or anything. Maybe she’s just tired.

So, we put her down in bed to have a little nap – thinking she’ll feel better after a sleep. But, she keeps crying. And crying. And crying. This is not like Jamie. Jamie is one of the toughest kids going. I’ve seen her walk straight into the corner of a wall so hard it made her fall backwards and all she did was say “ouch” and continue on. So, now I’m worried. I make an appointment with the doctor and start looking stuff up on the internet (why do I do that? It just stresses me out more to read about all the horrible things it could be – other than the obvious). Dave picks her up to take her to the doctor's and now there is a little bit of red-tinged fluid on the pillow. Now I’m really freaking out!

The doctor can’t visualize her eardrum well enough and sends her to emerg. where he’s called ahead to have two specialty doctors ready to have a look at her. They took her up to the special “ear section” of the hospital and did some work on her and they determined that she has a severe middle ear infection with a pin-sized hole in her eardrum. One of the doctors said it would actually be better if the hole was a bit bigger because then it would drain better and after some cleaning, and further information and instructions, Jamie was finally allowed to go back home.

“I want to go home! I want to go home!” she screamed the whole time she was being poked and prodded and having her temperature taken for the 5th time.

Flash forward a few hours and she has just woken up from a very, very, late afternoon nap (the shot above is of my poor little girl in the middle of that nap), and I asked her how she is feeling.

“Good”, she said.

The doctor said that her ear would be extremely painful for the next 2-3 days and we have her on children’s Tylenol along with her other meds….so you just know she is thinking, “I’ll say `good’ and then, maybe, they won’t take me back to the doctors”.

Tough little kid.

1 comment:

Shan said...

Oh poor Jamie! I hope she's feeling better.