Doctor x4

On Halloween morning, I broke down and went to urgent care.  I had not slept a minute the night before and could not swallow water without wanting to cry.  I seriously thought I had an enlarged lymph node or tonsil that would need to be surgically removed.  It hurt that bad.  Well, it turns out I had strep throat. 

As we were getting ready for bed after trick-or-treating, I noticed yellow snot (there is no better way to describe it) oozing out of Buddy's ear.  I did some googling and realized we would need to make a doctor appointment for the morning.  We dropped Punky off at preschool and headed to the clinic.  Turns out poor little Buddy's eardrum burst.  He must have had an ear infection that finally caused his eardrum to burst.  Buddy did not complain of anything at all.  No fever, no tugging on the ears, etc.  A few nights prior, he did wake two times at night (very uncommon), told me he had an ouchie and went back to sleep.  That was probably our only sign.  As the doctor was wrapping up the appointment, I casually mentioned to her that I was diagnosed with strep throat the day before.  So, she swabbed Buddy and sure enough he was positive!

I figured we better take Punky to the clinic since Buddy was positive and didn't show any symptoms.  So, after preschool and lunch, we were back to the same doctor.  Another positive!  Punky did have a fever and threw up about 10 days prior to that when we were at Grandma and Grandpa's house.  I wonder now if that was related to the strep throat or not. 

The doctor advised me that Derek should get checked as well.  So, he headed to the clinic after work.  The quick strep test came back negative but his doctor wrote him a prescription anyway. 

We know have four different types of medicine and a bottle of prescription ear drops on our kitchen counter.  Not a single one of us has the same drug, same dosage or same schedule for taking our meds.  It has been confusing coordinating it all!

Punky has been a champ with her medicine.   Up until a few months ago, the girl would not even taken Tylenol.  She would literally kick, scream and spit the medicine in our face.  Lucky for us, she wasn't sick too often!  My mom even suggested asking the doctor if there was a chewable or gummy bear type of antibiotic available.  She was that bad!  But, with Punky's Amoxicillin allergy it was not an option.  She recently started taking grape chewables by herself.  She asked the pharmacist for watermelon flavored medicine.  Unfortunately, her prescription only came in a strawberry flavor.  I just told her that it was watermelon because I figured she wouldn't know the difference.  Punky likes to squirt the medicine into her mouth by herself.  As long as we promise her a piece of candy, she takes it down just fine.

Buddy, on the other hand, was developed a distaste of medicine.  He has been sick even less than Punky.  This is his first ear infection and I don't hardly remember giving him Tylenol for a fever as a baby more than once or twice.  He used to just gulp it down without batting an eye.  He asked the pharmacist for bubble gum flavoring.  How he even knows what bubble gum is or that medicine came in that flavor is beyond me.  I told the pharmacist to give him watermelon because I didn't think he'd even like bubble gum.  And now, of course, Buddy hates his medicine.  He is the one spitting it in our face and crying when it is time to take his medicine.  Hopefully he outgrows this faster than his sister!