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EAR'S TO YOU

Nothing makes for a delicious breakfast like having your 4-year-old daughter announce, “Daddy, blood’s coming out of Parker’s ear.”

Now, many of you without children may think this would be of great alarm. Perhaps Parker had inserted a kabob in his ear, you might think. Others of you may be thinking, “Kabob? It’s breakfast. Who has kabobs for breakfast?” But those of you with children are merely nodding and saying, “Yup. Ear infection.”

Before I had kids, I didn’t know that bodily fluids would seep from a person’s head all the time. But children are the most amazing human faucets of funk. Now, when we see things such as this happen, it just means that my wife and I have to rock, paper, scissors for who takes him to the doctor.

By my count, Parker and Allie, combined, have had 405,000 ear infections. When Allie was younger, the only way to tell that she was sick was to judge her temperament, mainly by counting kicks, hits and bites. (She was 2, so we could cut her some slack. If she decides to let us know she’s under the weather at age 17 by punching one of us, there may be some discussion.) But while it was unpleasant dealing with her manifestation, at least it wasn’t breakfast-time ear blood, which is Parker’s main way of letting us know something is wrong with his ears. (He limits biting to when he’s tired.)

Parker has tubes in his ear, which are tiny little things that doctors somehow manage to put in kids’ ears to make them not get ear infections. When Parker gets his ears checked, the doctor puts this tiny little camera in his ear, and you get to see all of the inner workings of his ear, and see how this tiny little disc thing with a hole in the middle lets nasty, fetid stuff roll out of his ear. It’s equal parts disgusting and fascinating. From what I can tell, the tube keeps fluid from pooling up, thereby taking away a spa vacation for nasty little bacteria. Or, perhaps, the doctor is not actually doing anything, and is actually showing us video of an undersea exploration, and we’re just giddy at the technology and don’t ask questions.

But after a while, the tubes fall out, and it’s back to Infection Town, followed by stops in Antibioticville and Ewww-what’s-that’s-STUFF-coming-out-of-his-head? City. (Welcome to Over-stretched-analogyburgh.)

I’m guessing that we are at about the halfway point with Parker’s ear issues. Allie rarely gets ear infections now, and I think that’s because after her last set of tubes, the doctor decided to take out her adenoids, which apparently possess the sole function of making my children get ear infections. I personally have no idea what adenoids do, but like most medical, financial and automotive issues, I don’t ask questions. I do what the pros tell me. A mechanic could tell me he had to remove my car’s uvula or my 401K would collapse, and I would most likely hand him a blank check to fix the problems. (This is why my wife sighs a lot.)

So I suppose we are now going to head into the wait-and-see territory with Parker. The tubes are out, so it’s free-range ear time. In the near future, if he gets another ear infection, we will take him to the doctor again, and he will probably recommend we remove something else (“I’m afraid his alternator will have to come out”), and we’ll do what we’re told, for the hope that his ears will cease being an issue. Hopefully, the last set of tubes did the trick, however, and he will be done with ear infections for good. For one thing, it would be nice to have a breakfast without the phrase “ear blood” being mentioned. I am sure you can relate, as you would probably like to read a column without

the phrase “ear blood” being mentioned.