Thursday, March 5, 2009

The Trouble with Ears

I drove all over town on Tuesday evening looking for an otoscope. You see, Mary Grace has been telling me for a couple of days that her ears hurt, and of course Claire has an ear infection. While ear infections are not contagious, if they both had the same cold, there's a chance that they both could've developed ear infections. She hasn't had a fever since she started complaining about her ears, but neither did Claire.

The trouble is that Mary Grace loves medicine. The good news is that this makes it very easy to give her medicine when necessary, and it always has been. The bad news is that she's unreliable when it comes to telling me she hurts, because she could just be wanting more Children's Tylenol. Especially when her sister is getting all that sweet, yummy medicine for her ears.

So, I figure if I have my own otoscope, I can look at her ears for myself and decide if they look infected and need to see a doctor, or if someone just wants a little shot of Tylenol. It's pretty easy to do a google image search for "ear infection" and compare the pictures, right? And if I save myself time, a $25 copay, and picking up every other virus on the planet at the doctor's office, so much the better.

Of course, the medical supply store was closed, and neither of the pharmacies had one. So she has an appointment to see the doctor this afternoon. I'm sure, since she's been complaining for a few days, that he's going to tell me that he's never seen a worse ear infection, so that I can live with that guilt for a while.

How do you decide whether your children are really sick, or just faking for attention/medicine/so they can stay home?

1 comment:

strwberrryjoy said...

Just take one from the doctor's office next time. In theory, all your copays will cover the cost of it and they'll just think they misplaced it. HEHE! I might have to do this myself!