Patches has been having trouble sleeping. At the beginning of January both Patches and Gleek were having bad dreams. I started sitting in the hallway at bedtime and the issue resolved for Gleek. Patches kept waking up at night to come crawl into bed with Howard and I. He claims he does it because of bad dreams, but is unable to describe the dreams to us.
Then this morning he curled into a little ball and wailed because his ear was hurting. Everything clicked into place. Children with fluid behind their eardrums will frequently have disturbed sleep patterns. They go to sleep just fine, but the fluid collects and pressure builds until the kids wake up. Now I’m looking at all those awake-way-too-early mornings and the irrationally cranky times that Patches has been having lately. It is suddenly blindingly obvious that he’s been suffering from chronic fluid filled ears. Both Kiki and Link suffered similar problems, so I’ve seen this before.
I took Patches to the doctor. Sure enough, his ears are filled with fluid. So now we spend a week giving him decongestants and letting him chew a lot of gum. Then next week the doctor will look at his ears again. If they’re still full of fluid, then we’re off to the ENT and probably headed for ear tubes. I’m so glad to have found an answer to why Patches has been struggling and cranky for this whole month.
Have you tried taking him to a chiropractor for it? I would try that before resorting to tubes. It could be he’s got some cervical bones that when clicked back into place would allow full drainage. My dad does activator chiropractic from his home office in Sandy and has had years and years of success with treating ear problems.
That’s really neat. I think chiropractic is really interesting. Some chiropractors claim to be able to treat anything and everything with minimal results, but then others actually do treat things that seem crazy to treat with adjustments, with real results. My problem with it is there’s really no way to know if your chiropractor is a quack or not. At least, I don’t think there is. Is there?
I’ve always known mine was good. 😀
It is hard to tell if you’re going to get a good one or not. I’m blessed to have a whole family worth of good ones at my beckon call.
I’ve been most impressed with activator chiropractic for treating the stuff you’d never think of. While I was my dad’s secretary way back when he had an entire family cured of all of their severe allergies in a few months time. But now I’m just bragging. 😛
We found that the chiros that don’t claim to be able to solve all your issues and tell you that it might take longer than you think, are the ones who know what they are doing. If you are in San Jose, CA (not enough bandwidth to check your profile) then go look up Bragg Chiropractic and get Todd to work on you. If you’ve got back issues. He also has a masseuse on staff if it is just a stiff muscle issue.
I hadn’t considered a chiropractor. I’ll have to look into it.