This weekend was very quiet except for last night. Saturday was spent at the Magic House and going out to lunch, crowned by a quiet afternoon. Sunday Ragsy took me on an hour-long run. I was really proud of myself - I managed to keep up at a light jog the whole time, despite wearing a pair of jeans and a regular bra (poor boobs). When we got home, our little one soon collapsed for a 3-hour nap. Then came the evening.
Last night was quite an adventure. Around 9:30, our son pops out of bed and, very seriously, says, "Mommy, there's a bug in my ear. I can feel it moving around. It hurts." Yikes. That's not unreasonable; we'd spent most of the morning and early afternoon outside, he'd had a chance to throw sand before we went for our impromptu run and we have lots of bugs in the common area in the back of our house. So, we take him into the bathroom for a better look, but can find nothing. Ragsy keeps saying it hurts and is consistent - it was his right ear. So we call our insurance company's nursing hotline and are advised to get to an urgent care unit or ER tout de suite in case there really is a bug.
So, we start with Walgreens. Even though I know their Take Care Clinic isn't open this late, their Web site says they have otoscopes (something we could use to look in Ragsy's ear). We get there. No dice. And the chase is on - for a doctor or someone who can operate an otoscope for a few seconds.
Sundays are understandably busy days in most ERs and urgent care units - after all, doctors' offices aren't open Sundays, so where are the people who need medical care to go? So, we start with St. Luke's - it's closest. It also has a 3-hour wait and unfortunately, before anyone can get near our son with an otoscope, he needs to be processed and wait his turn. He wasn't exactly urgently ill, but the nurse had said that bugs can easily damage ear drums and the inner walls of the ear canal if allowed to remain in the ear. Anyway, St. Lukes' nurses tell us that there's an urgent care unit open 24 hours a day on Dorsett & McKelvey. My husband recalls one just up the street on Olive, so we swing by there first. Closed. Okay, well Barnes-Jewish West is on the way to 270. We stop there. Another 3-hour wait. Crud. But they direct us to the pediatric unit of the ER at Missouri Baptist.
We get there and are directed to the pediatric unit within five minutes. Within five minutes more, we've been visited by a nurse, who takes all Ragsy's vitals and by a doctor, who assures us that there's nothing more than standard (non-impacted) ear wax in Ragsy's ears - both of them. No cleaning necessary. He commented that there was a little sand in there, which is probably what was causing the sensation of having something crawling around in there.
I think the nurse was being nice when she told us we'd done the right thing bringing him in. But she said that bugs in kids' ears was especially common and a large problem in St. Louis City, where many of the homes are older or children live in areas that are more likely to be infested for whatever reason. She told me that one of the worst things she'd seen as a nurse was a roach extraction from a child's ear because their legs are barbed and they sink them into the lining of the ear to prevent being pulled out. Yuck.
Anyway, as usual, the process of getting out took longer than the diagnosis. We were home by 11:30/midnight-ish. For Ragsy, the whole thing had been a grand adventure. Within minutes of tucking Ragsy into bed, he was out again to inform us that there was another bug in his ear. He told us of another bug this morning when he woke up at 6:30 (what is wrong with him?), then again a few minutes ago (he's singing in bed instead of sleeping). Now I think it's time to have a discussion about crying wolf.
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