Anti-Antibiotics

Scooter awoke with a red puffy eye two days in a row, earlier this week. Her eye appeared crusty due to some sort of nasty discharge. By the afternoon of the second day, a pinkness encircled the puffiness of her eye. It deteriorated as her pupil peered at me through a diminishing slit.

Pinkeye was the first mom-diagnosis that entered my mind. I've never had pinkeye and I've never formally spotted pinkeye, but I assumed that's what she'd caught from some other germ-infested preschooler.

So, I dragged Scooter and Teacup to the doctor.

As the pediatrician examined Scooter, he seemed to struggle internally about what to do. Eventually, he confirmed that she had not caught pinkeye. Phew! However, she needed antibiotic eye-drops and an oral antibiotic for seven and ten days, respectively. In a rush to be dismissed, without question, I accepted the instructions and immediately filled the prescriptions.

The first day, Scooter liked the idea of the "treatment". With minor opposition, she drank the citrus-flavored oral antibiotic and allowed us to squirt a drop in her inflamed eye.

Her eye quickly returned to a nearly normal state. Then, she strongly refused the oral antibiotics. By her age, a few weeks shy of three years old, when she refuses to ingest something, I can no longer squeeze her cheeks and force it down the hatch. I knew any effort to force the issue would result in her spewing the medicine out of her mouth and me wearing it. I've been down that road with Teacup. No need to repeat that experience....

I focused on the eye-drops. By the time the next dose was to be dispensed, she started to put up a bit of a struggle. She fought to cover her eye. I eventually pinned her to the ground and forced a drop into her somewhat swollen eyeball. The next time, the minor struggle blossomed into a wrestling match with me holding her arms behind my knees and prying her eyelid open. Finally, Scooter added a head-thrashing motion to the full-fledged brawl. So, I gave up on the eye drops for fear that either my fingers or the eyedropper would do more harm than good.

Making excuses, I convinced myself that the pediatrician must have been overly cautious to prescribe both eye-drop antibiotics and oral antibiotics. I figured in the overly anitibotic-crazed society we live in, she doesn't need to OD on antibiotics.

When we returned to the pediatricians office for a follow-up visit, the doctor expressed pleasure regarding Scooter's recovery. However, he hesitated when he peered down her throat.

"How are those oral antibiotics going?" he asked.

"Well..... um..... Scooter doesn't seem to like them. So, I didn't force the issue." I ashamedly stammered.

"Oh. Well, just watch her pretty closely because Scarlet Fever is going around." And that was the end of the discussion.

Now you tell me!, I thought.

Since that visit, I've decided that we are an anti-antibiotic family despite being entirely ignorant of the real issues.

Does this make us pro-biotics?