How To Talk To The Kamikaze Bugs In Your Head

Jamie: Mom, my ear is buzzing.
*pulls ear...yelps...then tries to give his ear the evil eye*
Jamie: Hello? Hello bugs! Please go away, you're annoying me.
*no response from offending party*
Jamie: Get out of my ear right now.
*bangs head against wall*
Jamie: Mom, there are bugs in my ear and they are punching me.

Me: I know babe, but they can't hear you.

You'd think I would have figured it out earlier. The cold that set up camp in his sinuses, the return of a slight fever, the huddled moaning in the corner, but instead I always feel like I'm late to the mommy instincts game, coming to the brilliant deduction my son had an ear infection only after he was sobbing uncontrollably and talking to himself like some sort of deranged narcissist who was directing a symphony of bees.

Even though I seem to be the type of person who needs to see something like jagged bones poking out of arms to be convinced of a fracture... once I get worried, I really get worried. How do you console a distraught four year old? Particularly a four year old that doesn't get distraught very often. The last time Jamie sobbed uncontrollably for any length of time was when he was a colicky infant. So I did what I used to do when he was a baby--I rocked and sang to him and just hoped it would go away soon-- completely bewildered as to what else to do. We are not a family prone to ear infections and my mom's old remedy of garlic oil in the ear was not an option. (mostly because I don't have any, since I was desperate enough to try it, despite its propensity for turning one's house into a rancid Italian restaurant.)

In a brief stroke of brilliance I called on my friends. I remembered Kat had more than her fair share of ear infections as a child. She came to my rescue with the heated rice sock idea, back rubs and anything else that would help him calm down and thus relieve some of the throbbing. Bethany said she always watched Dr. Doolittle and Willy Wonka when she had ear infections, so we turned on the TV, asked daddy to pick up the antibiotics, and settled in for an afternoon/evening of movies, books and cuddles.

May that amoxicillin do its job quickly.