Winter's here and it brought it's usual

I started this post last Tuesday and I've been adding to it since

Winter came with a vengeance

It was 50 degrees over the weekend and now we have freezing temperatures and snow

Winter brought it's usual ick

and it didn't waste any time getting here this year

Our little guy has been handed his fair share of issues 

His ears have been a problem for most of his life

{2 sets of tubes and wax cleanings every 6 months- which is considered in-office surgery}

Our ENT has even commented on how odd {deep and narrow} his ear canals are

deep, narrow, waxy and fluid aren't a good combination

When the boy gets stuffy, we have issues

BIG ISSUES

It starts in the nose, then the ears and ends in the lungs

I struggle with where to take him when the cold sets in

ENT or regular physician?

His ENT can clean his ears out which helps the fluid flow
but he never wants to treat kids for ear infection

and when it ends up in the lungs, he can't do much for him anyway

That's when we need to see his asthma doc or his physician

The ENT is only in town 1 day a week and his asthma doc is in Iowa City

What do we do?

It just so happened that Parker had ear pain last night {last Tuesday}and couldn't hear out of his ear

I called his ENT and made an appointment

I was sure we would end up making an appointment for him to be seen by his physician too

but I thought we should start at the core problem which is all the wax this boys ears produce

Thursday:
His ears have been cleaned and are still popping
 The doc had no answers

FRUSTRATING

I'm tired of paying an arm and a leg for insurance
Then we pay a co-pay and now co-insurance thanks to the change in our insurance
We got no where
So now we'll be paying another co-pay and co-insurance
so we can hopefully get this poor boy some relief

Friday:
Parker was seen this morning by his regular physician {who we LOVE}
I explained what we were dealing with
She took a look as did her nursing student
The diagnosis-
Flaming red, beefy ears and bronchitis
{His Dr. even let me look at his ears}

She prescribed Z-pack, Prednisone, Albuterol treatments, Cortisporine drops
added to his regular prescriptions of Zyrtec and Singular

The poor boy is a mess!

Now we have to decide if we want to keep the ENT or get a referral to a new one
that will hopefully do something for us


We go back to the physician tomorrow for an ear check
Hopefully he's on the mend


UPDATE:

We went back for his recheck and he STILL has ear infection

10 more days of antibiotics