My Child Has A WHAT In His Ear??????? Part I
If you look closely, you can see the teeth marks. This came up days later and stayed for weeks. My poor baby 
I sincerely apologize this has to be a two part blog. There is a lot of information in this story that had to be given for a full understanding of how the “WHAT” ended up in Sayle’s ear, so please bear with me.
I blogged about Sayle’s adventure with extreme strep throat in June. Since I was focused on strep throat, I gave you the condensed version of everything else going on with his ears. We were also told Sayle had extreme ear infections, blown one tube out, the other tube was collapsed as far as the pediatrician could tell, and we needed to get back to our ENT ASAP. While the pediatrician was completing the simple task of just looking in his ears, he was in so much pain he bit me. At the time I was concentrating on just holding him still so the doctor could take a look, but after I had a horrible black and blue bruise on my shoulder for weeks after the appointment.
Between my working-mommy-melt-down, stomach virus, and dog passing away, we got to our ENT, Dr. Botros. He confirmed one of Sayle’s tubes was out and the other tube was MIA, meaning he couldn’t tell if it was there or not due to the extreme ear infection, but his ears were draining so that was a good sign. For those of you who aren’t familiar with drainage from ears after tubes, it looks like thick mucus. Once Sayle’s ears started draining, I understood exactly why they were so infected- that stuff is thick and NASTY! This time Sayle’s ears also had a distinct funky smell to them, which Dr. Botros explained as the smell from the bacteria from an inner ear infection. The smell is unmistakable, so keep in mind if you ever catch a foul odor from your child’s ear, take them to a doctor. Dr. Botros put Sayle on an ongoing dose of steroid ear drops and directions to “try” not to get his ears so wet this summer or we may be coming back for some new tubes.
Please keep your ears dry, Sayle.
You can imagine how easy it is to “try” to not to get your child’s ears so wet at the beach, pool, and bathtub. We did our best and were ear infection free for three months…
Recently, Sayle started saying, “Momma, ear hurt,” digging in his ear, and bringing us q-tips ASKING us to clean his ear. His right ear was draining, not excessively like I’d seen before, but since he was complaining consistently we made an ENT appointment. Before coming in for the appointment, Sayle was put an antibiotic for what I described to the nurse as an ear infection and we were still using the steroid ear drops as directed (remember this important point).
Sayle completely allowed Dr. Botros to examine and dig around in his ears. I noticed the doctor was looking closely in his right ear, hence, thinking we were ready to go for round two with tubes. Dr. Botros completed the exam and informed us Sayle did not need more tubes, but he needed to suction his ear first and afterwards give us an explanation.
He turned on this mini-ear vacuum and we all braced ourselves for a blood curdling scream from Sayle. Instead of screaming, Sayle leaned towards the vacuum and grinned. Dr. Botros pulled out this brownish clump of coiled nastiness that was approximately the size of my pinky nail. As he held it up, he said the following unimaginable words;
“Sayle had a fungus growing in his ear.”
Stay tuned for part II, where I get the medical explanation for how this is even possible and how I reacted.
What have you found in your child’s ear? How would have you reacted hearing your child had a fungus in their ear?
I probably would have freaked out! Matthew was digging in his ear one time and the smell was horrible! I brought him to the doctors just to find out he had stuffed a piece of pasta in his ear! It had been there awhile and was just nasty!
Kari, I WISH it had been pasta! That story is awesome! I am sitting here imagining what it may look like. Was it bow-tie, linguini, angel hair or what?
It was elbow macaroni. We had chop suey (his favorite) 3 days before so appearently he was saving some for later.
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