My son and I are on yet another round of antibiotics, this time for strep throat. I’ve always been a bit cautious with antibiotics, I suppose because my father is an immunologist and rarely drugged us as kids. He sort laughed off that notion it seemed everyone else had that if your nose runs, all you need to do is call the doc and load up on some antibiotics. My father argued that antibiotics did nothing for viruses, the cause of the flu, most sore throats, bronchitis and the common cold. If anything, he said, taking them unnecessarily could arm …read more

If you’ve had a child who had ear infections, you know just how bad they can be. And, as a parent, it’s difficult to watch your child suffering from the ear pain. Ear infections are surprisingly common. In Canada, 75% of children will have at least one ear infection before they reach their first birthday.
Usually, a suspected ear infection meant a trip to the doctor’s and a prescription for an antibiotic. This may not be so automatic now as the Canadian Pediatric Society is recommending a watch-and-wait approach in healthy children who are older than 6 months.
There are a few …read more

This may land me in the annals of bad mothering, but there is something about my son when he gets feverish that makes my heart turn to mush. He becomes this steamy, floppy, clingy creature and it takes effort on my part not to constantly hug him and kiss him. He’s like that today, feverish. It came with a headache, vomiting, sniffles and a sore throat. I took him to the doctor this morning, where he claimed to feel fine. His fever suggested the same, but the swab test didn’t lie. He had strep throat. Four hours later he was …read more

Okay, so I had let everyone know over on my other blog, Diabetes Notes, about my crazy week, but I forgot to mention it over here. My lil’ one had surgery last Friday and she is having a very tough time. It seems that she has developed an infection at her surgery site, throat and nose. She is only 5, she has been such a trooper though!
They changed her antibiotics around and drew some blood to double check that nothing went systemic, which I am sure it didn’t, but I feel so darn bad for my lil’ …read more