Backstory: The winter that we started daycare, Summer had an insane amount of sinus & ear infections that I don't know if we could even count due to the fact that no amount of medicine would make them go away. I've been told by her doctors that she must have a high tolerance for pain because she never complained and I actually had to watch her behavior to tell she was sick. After months of being sick, she had surgery to put tubes in her ears and remove her adenoids (Feb 2011). The tubes worked beautifully but before long the sinus infections came back. So she started seeing an allergist who put her on Zyrtec, Flonase (nose spray) and saline spray. It was like a miracle! After about a year, I decided to switch allergists which was mostly due to Cole's asthma and the lack of anything that I felt our allergist had done after the first appointment. I started taking Cole to CHOP so I decided to take Summer there as well. Due to nothing coming back on the initial allergy tests (false negatives in young children are apparently usual), I was advised to back down her daily medications and wait for symptoms to start before putting her back on them in order to try to find a pattern to her symptoms. Around the same time, she failed her 4 year old hearing test at her annual physical. We went to the ENT that had done her surgery for a check. She failed the test there in her left ear as well and had a terrible amount of wax in her ear that prevented the doctor from fully examining her. We did several weeks of drops and when we went back in November it was determined that her tube had fallen out and her eardrum was 30% ruptured. The doctor said it will hopefully heal on its own and we are waiting for a year and if it doesn't heal she may need surgery to patch her ear drum.
Then just a couple of days before her follow up with the specialist, her ear started oozing. I was able to get an emergency Saturday visit with her pediatrician and was told that due to her allergies that we had pulled back her medications for, her sinuses were draining out of the hole in her eardrum. Talk about gross! He also said that she is most likely allergic to trees since that is the pollen that is very high right now. He had us put her back on just her Zyrtec and not her nose spray and said to come back in a week if her nose was still disgusting. He wanted to hold off on antibiotics until the ENT saw her.
Back to her Tuesday visit with Daddy... she was a chatty Kathy all the way down and breezed through her hearing test. She only couldn't hear the lowest tones.... so woohoo on hopefully no permanent hearing loss once her eardrum is healed. The bad news is that her ear is severely infected. He told us to put her back on all of her allergy medications, which include zyrtec, prescription nose spray and saline spray, plus ear drops for a week to clear the infection. We go back in a month to hopefully see improvement and get ear plugs for her to wear in the pool during the summer months. We need to keep her ear clear if we want it to have a chance of healing. Oh and no one can believe that with the size of her tonsils that she doesn't snore or complain of pain, so I'm sure at some point in time they will need to come out but for now we just watch. Keep Summer in your prayers that her eardrum heals on its own.
