Every few weeks it’s the same.
Ivy gets an ear infection and her ears start to discharge.
One of the joys of being immune deficient, I guess.
Her ear goop grows all sorts of weird and wonderful things, ranging form your stock standard Staph all the way to various spores and fungii. When your body can’t mount a response, opportunistic bugs set up house.
Anyhow, it generally goes sore ear, goop, huge temperature, phone call to the various docotors, up the antibiotics and then start the eardrops.
The dreaded eardrops.
Ivy hates them.
I hate them.
This week Ivy’s ears have not played nicely and with only ten days left until we go away, I want her to be as well as possible.
Scratch that.
I don’t want to take her away if she is sick.
Ivy is generally excellent at taking her medication. Anything oral goes straight down with only a few spit up incidents here and there. IV meds are a walk in the park but ear drops are her worst nightmare.
She bargains with me, she begs she tells me straight out NO! She holds her hands over her ears, clings to her own hair,so that I am unable to pry them away from the auditory orifice. She bucks, she screams she twists and turns. Anything to prevent me from putting those pesky drops in.
Six drops, in each ear, then the pinna pumped for 30 seconds. You’d think it would be easy.
It’s not.
Tonight I told her flat out that I didn’t want to take her on holidays if her ears were goopy
and you know what she did?
She shrugged.
She’d rather miss out on a family vacation than have those six little drops put in each ear.
What am I going to do?
Any ideas?
Also blogging at Three Ring Circus
I hear you! The other day Peanut had an ENT visit and he always clears out the wax. This time he saw some scab that’s always there but decided to try to get it out. Made her ear bleed and she was crying so hard! It broke my heart. Then he said I’d have to put ear drops in 3 times a day for 4 days to help it heal. Thanks a lot! I was not happy. She was not happy. I was so glad when we were done. She cried everytime and it took 2 of us to pin her down to get them in.
Ohhhh I hate that process of making them do something good for them when they hate it! No great ideas here I’m afraid other than perhaps she would do your ears first to see what it’s like or try doing her own ears or some such process? You’ve probably tried anything I can think of…
Is there anything special that would distract her? A new video just for eardrop time, a silly song, a game? Being wrapped up in a snug blanket?
Poor Ivy. And poor Tiff. Good luck.
The other Trish has some great ideas
I gave you mine on your blog.
Eardrops are no fun. Hope it does the trick so you can go away.
Thank you everyone.
Some great ideas here.
I second what Trish mentioned… When we have had to give Alex eardrops and he has had to stay on his side, I would put his head on my lap and we’d watch a short movie, then flip him and do the other ear. I would always have a movie that was reserved for eardrop time only. With his eyedrops that he had to keep his eyes closed for a bit we listened to a specific piece of music together (Ode to Joy…it’s his theme music!)…
The key with him is that it had to be something special- anything he had access to everyday was not leverage enough…
Good luck with the drops!
Big hug!
B
I was a child with constant ear infections…I SO remember the drops and the pain.
And I cannot think of anything to make it all better. It simply stinks.
Hugs for Ivy.
I’m sooooo sorry. I have no suggestions. Poor little Ivy.