My ear just feels completely shut

Well, after a weekend of bike riding, diver-spotting (a remarkably popular activity amongst our offspring), park playing and pretending to be Nan by drinking tea whilst having a picnic (note that I apparently don't achieve full Nan status as I refused to buy them chips to eat with their sandwiches...), the bubble burst rather spectacularly last night with Anya developing what seemed to be an ear infection.

They'd both been a bit snotty for a while and Ian has had a mega cold but I was quite taken aback by poor Anya screaming in pain through the night - the girl is never ill, bar the odd cold and chicken pox, and has never had anything serious other than one bad cough as a baby. She barely slept (me neither for that matter) from midnight until this morning so was exhausted on top of it all, and was getting progressively worse. Spoke to the angel that is Wendy (our homeopath) first thing and she prescribed a remedy for her, which, within 5 minutes of taking, sent Anya into a much needed deep sleep for over 2 hours. Whilst she was sleeping I made an appointment at the doctors to check that we really were dealing with an ear infection and to get an idea of what we can expect. She responded really well to the remedy and was actually singing to herself in the doctors but the docs confirmed that her inner ear is red and inflamed but there is no leakage of fluid or damage to any part of her ear. She therefore falls into the category of 'we don't know what will happen; 50% of cases will clear up by themselves, the rest will get worse and require treatment'. So, at least we know what we're playing with.

He's given antibiotics (her first ever prescription) and has given us a couple of days during which we can see how she is - if she improves, leave alone, if she gets worse, give the nasties.

So, she's had another Wendy remedy tonight and I'll review with her in the morning how she feels Anya is progressing. I'm just hoping she gets a good night's sleep (or rather I'm hoping that I get a good night's sleep!). The way she's going I don't reckon we'll need the nasties, hope not anyway.

I was almost amused that the doctor went into a slight panic as he thought that some of Anya's notes were missing on the computer. I had to explain that they weren't, she really had only been to the doctor's once before (at 6 months to double check that what I thought was chicken pox actually was). He said he'd never known another kid make it to her age with so few doctor's visits and no prescriptions. Reckon it's all that dirt we let her eat....

Interestingly, as a measure of how off-colour she has been, the girl who could best be described as a pure mixture of imagination and dynamite, has been no-one other than herself all day. I don't think I can remember that ever happening before since she was verbal.