Ear Infection and Ruptured Ear Drum

Ear infections are bad news for kids with microtia and atresia, because these kids usually only have good hearing in one ear. When they get an infection in that ear, their hearing suffers tremendously. Shae had her first ear infection in her "good" ear when she was 9 months old. The ENT decided to be aggressive treating it when he saw that the fluid was still built up behind the ear drum 3 weeks later. A tube was put in at the same time Shae had her skin tags removed in October 2007. When we went to the ENT in January, he said that the tube was starting to work its way out. Well, it must have finally done so, because Shae woke up at 11 p.m. on Friday night saying that her ear hurt. She continued to cry off and on all night until finally falling asleep around 4 a.m. When she woke up at 9:30, she had a bloody discharge from the ear. I immediately took her to the doctor, and sure enough, she has an ear infection so bad that her eardrum ruptured. She went from mild cold symptoms with NO FEVER to full blown infection and ruptured ear drum. Her tolerance for pain is high, so she must have ignored any pain earlier in the week until it was so bad, the ear drum was about to rupture. The ENT had planned to wait to see how she did once the tube fell out before replacing it, but I am fairly certain that when I call his office on Monday, he's going to want to schedule the procedure as soon as this infection clears up. I'm feeling a little inadequate this weekend, like I should have been able to tell that this was coming on. Rationally, I know that with no fever and no complaints until 11 p.m. the night before, I couldn't have done anything other than what I did, but still...