We should just move into the hospital

Wow, I'm really tired of going to the doctor's office. It feels like we've been there a ton lately. Let's see, Sean had a checkup, Bethany's had all her let's-see-if-she-has-Asberger's/ADHD appointments, Meagan went in for a very infected finger, I went in for sciatica, and today we went back again for Bethany. All the kids have been sick with colds or the flu or something for the past two weeks, and I thought it was finally getting better, but then Bethany started complaining about her ear hurting when she went to bed. I've had my fill of the ER (the only after-hours care open to us here), so I just gave her some Tylenol and made an appointment early this morning to take her in. The good news is that she's still being very cooperative, except with the blood pressure cuff--she really doesn't like that. The bad news was that they had to dig around in her ear a bit to even see it. As soon as the doctor touched it, she started to whimper. The first doctor (a resident) couldn't see much because of too much wax in her ear. She tried to get some out, got a bit, and said from what she could see, it didn't look too bad, we should just watch her over the next couple of days and see if it got better. Then she went to talk to her attending physician, who came back in with her, got a bigger stick and dug more wax out of Bethany's ear, took another look and said it was very inflamed, no doubt about it. Poor Bethany. It took us forty minutes at the pharmacy to get her medicine, while she cried off an on that her ear hurt. Of course Sean got fussy, because it was time for him to eat. Finally we got the medicine, went home, I drugged her up with Tylenol and everybody was happy.

We ended the day really well, though. Meagan fell asleep in the afternoon while watching a movie, so she was in a good mood. We had a good hour and a half after dinner before it was time for bed, and the weather was beautiful, so I decided to take them to the park. A friend was there with his kids, so I chatted with him for a bit while the kids played. It was a new park, and Bethany and Meagan had a great time. It was a really nice way to end the day.