Brooke's poor ear

Yesterday I went to pick kids up from daycare.  When I got there Brooke told me she needed her diaper changed.  So, we went through the process & she tells me she needs to potty.  So, we head to the bathroom & then I end up chasing her out and trying to catch her before she escapes too far.  In the process of all that I notice that her left earlobe is quite red and swollen.  I grabbed a hold of her telling her, "Ohh!  Your ear is infected, let me take out your earring."  I take out her earring and I find this:

 

Sister has had these earrings in for at least 2 weeks, maybe longer.  They came from Claire's and they say "sensitive solution" on the package they came on.  At first I thought maybe it was just stuff from the earring on her ear.  I tried to wipe it off & it was as hard as a rock.  At this point B kinda freaked out on me.  :)  My girlfriend & I put some alcohol on it (she didn't have any peroxide).  The alcohol didn't seem to do anything.  I'll be honest, at this point I kinda freaked out.  We all know what kind of history my kids have with their ears.  If something can go wrong.....it will!  I asked Laura if she'd keep Caleb & pick Sam & Nash up from After School Club by 5:30 so I could take Brooke into InstaCare.  She said that she would do that so I put Brooke in her carseat and we were off.

In the last month Brooke has seen an ENT 3 times and has been on 2 different antibiotics.  You would think if anything was amiss it would have been noticed.  Apparently not! :)

When we got to InstaCare I showed the nurse why we were there - she was grossed out - and we had about a 10 minute wait before we were called back (a new record!).  I was telling the nurse that was doing her vitals about it and she said the same kind of thing happened to her little girl, that it was just a reaction to the earring.  I asked if it was a reaction to an earring wouldn't it be n both ears instead of just her left one?  Apparently that's not how it works I guess.

The dr. finally came in to see us and I showed him Brooke's ear.  He was grossed out too.  He put gloves on and felt her ear - which she was not a fan of.  He told me that it was a bad infection.  I told him that she had been on two different antibiotics in the last month - Zythromax & Omnicef & that she had a reaction to the Omnicef.  He decided to put her on Keflex 3 times a day.  He also told me to a do a warm compress every 3-4 hours for at least 10-15 minutes.  Then he told me that when the gray tissue softens up that it will need to be pulled back and trimmed off (awesome, right?).

Today her ear actually looks worse than yesterday.  I can only imagine what it would have looked like if she hadn't had three doses of antibiotics and several warm compresses on it!  The ear lobe seemed to be much more red and it was hot today (wasn't hot to the touch yesterday).  I decided to pin her down and take a straight pin and gently poke at the gray tissue to see if it had softened up and could be peeled away.  The ear exploded like a giant zit.  Not. Even. Joking.  It was nasty!  Poor Brooke cried and cried big old alligator tears and kept saying, "Owie mommy!"  Once it started to ooze pus out I was glad I had grabbed some toilet paper just in case!  I figured I'd better put some pressure on it to get it all out so that it doesn't just fill back up over night.  Once the thing quit draining I realized that the entire area that was gray was just flopping and hanging on by a thread.  Apparently when it exploded it really exploded.  Well, I couldn't just leave the dang thing dangling there and hope that it didn't catch on something and rip completely off & take more of her ear wth it!  I then had to pin her down again and try to cut away as much of the dead gray tissue as I could.  I again had her saying "Owie Mommy!" and crying big old alligator tears.  I felt so bad!  It was almost as bad as when I had to hold Nash down for a spinal tap when he was 2 1/2!

So now we've gone from big nasty dead gray rock hard swollen red chunk on her left ear to this:

This picture doesn't even do it justice.  It seriously looks like I tried to gauge my baby's ear!  There's still a little bit of gray dead tissue but it was connect onto her earlobe still and I didn't want to make it worse!  

She was really good to put a warm washcloth on it after we got it all trimmed off.  I'm crossing my fingers it doesn't heal funky or get infected even more!  That hole is about the size of a pencil eraser!

And in other news....

When Sam came out of dance class tonight she gave me a note saying that her Hip Hop dance took 1st!  Wahoo!  They gave the girls the first place ribbon for their Hip Hop dance and the 2nd place ribbon for their Jazz dance!  Sam was pretty excited.  Travis thought that it should have been switched with their Jazz getting first and their Hip Hop getting second.  What does he know anyway?

Next week on Thursday they are doing a class dance performance, awards, dance off & drill down.  This is new!  They've never done that before.  They always just do the end of the year recital and then do the dance off at the end of the recital.  The note she got also said they want them to perform at the end of the matinee show.  This means dress rehearsal from 11-1, back to Sky View at 3:30 (matinee starts at 3) to perform at the end of the matinee and then the evening performance starts at 6:30 so they have to be there at 6.  This is going to make for a very long day on Saturday, May 18.  Since her dad isn't home I'm crossing my fingers I can find a grandma/grandpa that want to babysit all day long!  After her dance recital on the 18th she will have a break until summer dance starts on June 4th.  This year the summer dance performing team will perform at Seven Peaks, Relay, Logan Aquatic Center & do a family performance.  She's pretty excited about the whole Seven Peaks performance.  Should be yet another new adventure for us!