Infected

Ashley has been suffering from a nasty cold for several days now and has had a mild rash on her face to go along with it. For the past 2 days, she has been unusually fussy, and last night, I caught her touching her hands to her ears and immediately I began to be paranoid that she might have an ear infection. Since Zachary has only had one ear infection so far and Ashley hasn't had one at all yet, I'm always afraid that if my kids had one, I would miss it.

My mom suggested I might take Ashley to the doctor to have her checked out, but I'm always hesitant. I hate the thought of spending money on an unnecessary doctor visit when there is really nothing that can be done. But, of course, I don't hate that any more than I hate having to watch my kids suffer. Sometimes it is better to go ahead and make the call or take them in even if only for a little peace of mind.

We were at Zachary's swimming lesson yesterday and Ashley was very cranky, and while I normally take her to the park and push her on the swings during that half-hour, today she wasn't enjoying it like she normally does. We went to sit in the air-conditioned car for the remainder of the lesson, and she looked and was acting just miserable. I decided I'd better make the call.

Just as I was dialing the number to the office, I noticed something about Ashley's foot. A couple of weeks ago, she got sores on each of her feet from wearing water socks all day at Schlitterbahn. The tags inside the water socks rubbed the skin off, creating some painful-looking sores, but both seemed to be healing just fine, or so I thought. It was right then that I noticed that one of the sores had developed a slight bit of an infection. One more thing to ask about, I thought, but I was sure that it was no big deal. If it weren't for Ashley being sick, I wouldn't have given it a second thought. I certainly wouldn't have given it a second thought if it was on MY foot.

I finally called, and as I thought, there was no reason to bring her in over this cold and rash, but for the foot, she had to be seen. I thought that was sort of ironic. Here she's had this horrible cold and is MISERABLE and I need to take her in for the FOOT!?? Totally unexpected.

We went to the appointment, and the nurse had to hold Ashley's foot still so the doctor could puncture the skin with a needle and squeeze out some liquid to take a culture for testing. Of course, you can imagine how well Ashley liked that. She was on my lap and I really had to restrain her to keep her from hurling herself out the door. After it was over, the doctor gave me a prescription for antibiotics that she has to be on for the next 10 days, and that's just until they know what sort of bacteria it is. We will know in 3 days, and presumably they will give her another prescription for something to fight the specific strain causing the infection. While we were there, I had the doctor check her ears, and she said both looked good. Whew!

I thanked the doctor as she was about to leave. Neither she nor I expected what happened next. Ashley, too, said, "Dankooo!" It was a proud moment for me that my daughter would thank the doctor after causing her so much pain. Of course, she could have just been mimicking me, but she said it with such sincerity. Maybe she really was just thankful that the doctor was going to leave her alone. I don't know, but she was so cute about it. Later, in the car, she kept saying, "Bye doctors!" over and over again. She seems to be doing better and has been resting, but we'll see how cooperative she is when she starts those antibiotics in the morning!