pain

My eldest is struggling with an ear infection. Not only is his inner ear inflamed, so is the canal. He does this thing which I liken to a dog scratching ear. His sitcks his pointer finger or his pinky in the ear and scratches up and down like 62 times. It looks very much like a dog scratching his ear.

He has always had an obsession with his ears. They are always itchy. Usually I can distract him, sometimes I cannot. When it get bad he almost always ends up with an infection in the canal from the scratching. The problem is he rarely knows when it hurt because he has very little pain receptors due to his Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. So by the time we notice lots of itching and some complaining the infection has taken hold.

The Hubby took the son to the doctor on Friday and the doctor was shocked by the amount of ear war packed into his ears. The ear drums were not even visible. She is doing a regimen of a couple different ear drops and a wax softener. Then a thorough cleaning will take place with the waterpik at the doctor's office on Friday. He is going to be less than happy.

The ear drops are a huge pain. He thinks he has to keep his head tilted for about 30 minutes after drops, so having to put drops in both ears takes a major undertaking. It is not fun.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that the infection is so bad that he also has conjunctivitis in his eyes and 2 spots on his nose that I thought were simply bad zits is part of the infection as well so ointment for both was necessary. The doctor said she could not imagine how painful the infection was. In some respects it is nice to have lowered pain receptors in other ways no so much. Of course these lowered pain receptors don't help when his sibling bump into him or hit him with a stuffed animal, of course that hurts so terribly bad that he wants to beat on them!

I hope that we can get the ear wax under control so that he can be pain free whether or not he knows it.