The school year has been known to strike terror into my heart. The reasons for this level of paranoia are the germs and viruses it sends home with my kidlets. In fact, my main reason for loving summer vacation, after being able to spend more time with the kidlets of course, is that we tend to be a heck of a lot healthier.
So when Horse woke me up at two in the morning to tell me her ears were hurting her, I had a momentary lapse and wondered if the school year started without my knowledge. I belatedly remembered that I had been neglecting to put any form of anti-swimmer's ear drops in her ears after her weekly swim lessons. Oops. I probably should have been doing that. There's nothing quite like guilt on top of a lack of sleep to make a mother feel incompetent in this whole parenting gig.
At some point in the sleep-deprived morning, I realized it was late enough to call the doctor's office to determine whether they would just prescribe eardrops over the phone or whether we needed to be seen. Apparently, they missed our copays these past couple of months, and told me that Horse needed to come in and we should just use their walk-in hours today instead of making an appointment. Given that their walk-in hours encompass pretty much every hour they are open, I thought they might only make well-visit appointments these days and just hope all the sick and/or injured kidlets do not show up all at the same time. Whatever the case may be, the kidlets all grabbed something to occupy them at the pediatrician's office, and we headed out to the car.
Upon arriving at the parking lot for the pediatrician's office, I realized the actual reason for not assigning us an appointment time: there were no appointment times left. That parking lot was packed. We managed to find a spot and entered the building only to have to cram the four of us into two chairs and smush up like sardines while awaiting our turn. Thankfully, we were called in fairly quickly.
In hindsight, I realize we were herded into the small room to await the pediatrician simply because they could throw us into one of their sick-visit rooms. All of the well-visit rooms were packed with people trying to get their back-to-school physicals done in time for school to start. Very few people were there for the walk-in hours we used, so they had a place to put us to make the waiting room look slightly less crowded. This, however, did not mean there was a pediatrician anywhere near ready to come and take a look at my poor girl's ears.
Thankfully, the kidlets all came prepared for an insanely long wait time. Horse and Pig Jr. brought their electronic gadgets to amuse themselves with whatever game they brought. Rooster carried with her a huge bag of crayons and a coloring book. In approximately thirty seconds, the only one still using the item she brought was Horse. The other two insisted they did not want to use their stuff from home.
Here is where I came up with my dumbest idea of the day. I am going to blame a lack of sleep on my stupidity. I suggested that Rooster and Pig Jr. trade the materials they brought from home and each use the other person's stuff. What a brilliant idea! And they loved it for a whole whopping ten seconds! That's about how long it took for Pig Jr. to realize he really, really did not want his sister using his electronic game. I wound up spending the next umpteen minutes trying to pacify my highly irate son while his sister played with his toy. I tried to remind him about how he willingly said he would color in his sister's coloring book and she would play the game instead. I reminded him about how this was only temporary. Once the doctor came in, they could switch back. Then I prayed for the doctor to get there now, dang it! Pig Jr. did eventually return to his sister's coloring book, but that took a lot of cajoling on my part to get him to do so.
Eventually, we were graced by the presence of the nurse practitioner, who took a thirty second look at Horse's ears and pronounced both an inner and outer ear infection in one ear, and stated that something was brewing in the other ear, too. She said she would notify our pharmacy about the antibiotics and eardrops that Horse required. Thank you, and have a nice day.
We waited for about two hours for the privilege of not even seeing the pediatrician.
I suppose that all things considered, it could be worse. We were able to have Horse looked at today, so hopefully those medicines will start kicking in and the whole family can sleep through the night tonight. Ear infections are not contagious, so I do not have to worry about it spreading through the family like wildfire. The medicines were not cheap, but at least they were not overly expensive. And as far as not seeing one of the pediatricians is concerned, I am sure we will be seeing both of them soon enough once the school year starts.
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