Star Trek?

Stick with me, and you'll get the reference in the title.

You know Natalie has been sick since Sunday with the cough, fever, gooey nose and general malaise that the boys have also had. Well, after returning to school on Thursday, yesterday morning she woke us with a lot of pain somewhere. Our first thought was constipation, but that was soon dismissed. Tom saw her pulling at her ear, so we assumed an ear infection even though she has ear tubes...she shouldn't have ear infections, right? Anyway, Motrin covered the pain, I put antibiotic ear drops in her ears, and we went on with another stay-at-home, recover-from-sickness, it's-raining-anyway kind of day. Except we did take freshly baked oatmeal raisin cookies to surprise Tom at work for Valentine's Day.

Then last night as we were getting the kids ready for bed, I noticed a little red tinge around Natalie's ear, like there had been fluid coming out of her ear with a little blood in it. Hmmm. I called Urgent Care, they wanted to see her. Thankfully the visit was quick (there was no wait) so we were home, with a prescription for an antibiotic, 1.5 hours after leaving. The doctor said her ear tubes were still in place, and it's possible to have blood come out during an infection.

This afternoon, after a busy morning and lunch (will post about that soon), we were talking to my friend Anne on the deck and I noticed Natalie's ear again, and there was even more blood around it. That brought the memory of the gross-me-out scene from Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan where some mind-controlling eels go in through the ears. Now I called the ENT's office to see if there's a doctor or nurse on-call. Natalie's ENT was the on-call doctor! He said it's normal (not what we want to happen, but not unheard of), we're doing the right thing: oral antibiotics and ear drop antibiotics. His office is open on Monday (everything else is closed!) so he'll see Natalie then.

The funny thing is she's pretty happy through all this (after the intial screaming yesterday morning). It looks like another Sunday worship at home tomorrow for me and at least Natalie.