Slight unexpected turn to our week.

I got a call from a friend of ours yesterday morning.  They were planning on coming into town to swim at the rec center and did Emma and I want to join them.  This is one of Emma’s best friends and we has been planning on going anyways, so we said yes! 

Last night Emma makes a slight comment, “My ear hurts.”  I filed that information away.  This morning “my ear hurts a little when I do this” (puts her hand over her ear) “and when I hiccup and I can’t hear as well out of it”  I glanced at Dave, hopped online and what she was saying fit with swimmer’s ear.  I called the clinic and they could not get her in before we were supposed to meet for swimming and they agreed with what I was thinking, that she should not go back into the pool before being checked out.  Emma was not a happy camper to find out she would miss swimming with her friends, and the friends thankfully understood why we had to bail out.  The clinic gave me a choice of a late morning appt  at the farther away clinic or a 330 at the closer clinic in town.  Went with the earlier appt in case we needed to get her on meds.

The nurse practitioner had a student working with her.  Went through Emma’s symptoms and told them I was leaning towards swimmer’s ear due to the fact that we had been at the pool a lot and it did not pattern Emma’s typical ear infection which is a high fever of around 103 that can barely be kept down with pain reliever until the antibiotics kick in.   She ran a fever Sat night and one dose of Ibuprofen took care of it.  The student took one look and said there was something definitely going on in her ear.  I felt better (not that I wanted her to have an infection but that my instinct was correct).  The NP came in and agreed but said it was actually a middle ear infection and was really surprised that she was not running a fever.  So, she is on 10 days antibiotic and cleared to return to swimming on Monday.  I think that is the silver lining actually…  If it had been swimmer’s ear, everything I am reading says she would have been out of the pool about 10 days.  Right now I am just hoping the antibiotics kick in before it starts getting more painful.  Thankfully she has never had to deal with the pain from an ear infection (not sure how).  I remember that pain all too well.

As a side note, we can add some human body studies to this week’s science.  She will be looking at what the ear looks like with an ear infection and without.  That is the bummer about being the patient, you can not always look in the neat tools!