A "ticky" situation

I was tucking R into bed yesterday night after listening to him read.  He said his eye hurt.  I looked at it, and said "we'll take you to the doctor in the morning."  Surely it is conjunctivitis (pink eye) - nothing that required an ER visit at 6:30pm on a Sunday.  As I go to kiss him goodnight I spot something dark inside his ear.

"Ryk does your ear hurt?" questioning if he had a ruptured ear drum or something.

He denies any pain.  I get a Q-tip to clean it out, and nothing comes out...still dark inside his ear.

I go downstairs to get my otoscope - finally making good use of the $600 spent on the stinking thing.  I piece it together and get ready to peer inside and spot...

a watermelon seed?  Nope.  It looked like one though.

It was a...TICK!

At this point it is just after 7:00pm on a Sunday, so I call the pediatrician to see what to do, I am calm and collected about the situation, omitting the whole "OMG you have a BUG in your EAR part to Ryk because the last thing I need is a spazzing out, bug eared six year old on my hands.

I calmly explain to Paul, and he flips.the.heck.out.

"TAKE HIM TO THE ER.  GET THE BUG BIOPSIED.  TAKE CARE OF IT."

Overreacting...just a bit.

I tell him I called the pediatrician and am waiting for them to call back.

15 minutes pass.

Paul's eyes are about ready to pop out of his head at this point.  Seriously.  He is getting irritated at me for not handling this buggy situation, I am calmly waiting for the phone call back...

After 20 minutes, and right as I was getting R into the van to take him to the closest children's hospital, I get a phone call back.  The on-call pediatrician tells me because of the location of the tick (inside his ear canal) I need to bring him in to get it removed just incase it gets stuck...

Great.

So I drive there, and make small talk with R, telling him we are just going in because he "might have an ear infection" leaving out the whole - oh hey son, just taking you to the ER to get a bug removed from your ear.

We get there, watch a movie in the waiting room, get banded with matching bracelets, and wait to be called back.




The pediatrician comes in before the nurse does, tweezers and specimen cup in hand.  She quickly removes the tick (which takes along a piece of my sweet R with him, darn bug!), asks R if he wants to take it home and R, who is horrified, says



"what if it gets my brother or sister?"

They seal that sucker up in the specimen cup for proper disposal, never to suck blood from another human.

I was told to do daily tick checks on this kiddos because we had a mild winter so ticks are rampant this year.  Now I know how to remove a tick, and to watch for fever, rash, and joint pain (signs of lyme disease).

He was diagnosed with "tick bite" and "conjunctivitis" the remedy for this...a dipped cone at DQ (and some not so pleasant eye drops).

Such a stud.