Infections

Since before Connor's 4 month doctor visit, we had noticed that he rubbed and batted his right ear while drinking his milk. At the time of his visit, he had a cold so we had the doctor check his ears for infection, but he didn't find anything. Although the cold went away, he has still not been sleeping well and he continued to mess with his ear so we took him to the doctor this week. After digging a significant amount of wax out of his ear, Dr. Coco determined that he does have an ear infection and put him on Amoxicillin. Getting the prescription filled was quite an adventure. If you are like me, you don't know much about medicine and trust that what you get from the pharmacy is what the doctor prescribed. This week I learned differently. I have received Amoxicillin as a pill before for me, but expected a liquid for an infant. When I got the filled prescription home from CVS (121/Hebron), I opened the sealed bottle to find a powder. There wasn't anything on the instructions or bottle that indicated it should be a liquid. The directions were to give 1 teaspoon 2X a day. The doctor had mentioned that we could put the medicine in Connor's milk, so maybe a powder made sense (the pharmacy knows what they are doing, right?), but it just wasn't feeling right to me so I called the pharmacy. In fact, it was supposed to be liquid and the one who filled the prescription messed up. Since one of the potential reactions to overdose is renal failure, I made sure that the head pharmacist knew that they could have put my son at risk if I had just followed the directions since in a powder form, a teaspoon would have been significantly too much. She assured me that the one who filled it had been written up and they mixed the powder with water and I was on my way again. Unfortunately, this was not the end of the story. I got home and gave Connor his first teaspoon dose and realized that it didn't seem that there was enough for 20 doses. So, I measured 20 teaspoons and it came to almost twice the amount that was in the bottle. I took it back to Mya and once again, they had mixed it wrong and it was effectively a double dose. She acknowledged both times that this could have been serious/fatal if I wouldn't have caught it. I just thank God (literally) that something just didn't feel right and we caught it before anything happened. After only a couple of doses, Connor started getting white stuff on his tongue and lips. As it turns out, antibiotics kill off bacteria that fight off yeast infections in the mouth causing what is called "thrush". It's harmless and should go away within a couple of weeks, probably shortly after he finishes his medicine. Despite all of this, Connor continues to be an extremely happy boy and doesn't seem to even care that he has an ear infection and thrush at the same time. We are truly blessed!
By the way...they weighed Connor and he now weighs 17lbs (with diaper, onesie, bib and pacifier).