Ear tube help!?

Question

My 5 year old son is a non verbal autistic and he's had 3 sets of ear tubes. His last set was two years ago when his dr. put in "t"tubes. The type of tubes that don't come out on their own. Even with those types of tubes, he still get ear infectons a lot. The dr. who did the surgery moved so we had to find another ENT. About 2 weeks ago, we took him to his regular dr. and both ears were infected. We had a follow up with the ent and she said he ears looked ok, but he had a lot of build up and crust around the tube. She told us that they usually would put peroxide in the ears to clean off the tubes, but there's no way he's going to let you do that. We were using floxin ear drops. Not even a week later, he wakes up screaming bloody murder at night and we took him in and they said his left ear looked a little red and prescribed omnicef. He's been on the meds for 3 days and he wakes up at least 3 times per night just screaming. He's fine during the day.

His ears don't seem to bother him during the day, it's just when he's been laying down for a while. I've been giving him motrin for pain, but that doesn't seem to help at all. When I spoke with the ent nurse she said the floxin drops are not going to clean up the tubes if it's really crusted on. How else can she remove it? Can this be done in the office? For the past 3 solid weeks he's gotten up several times a night. I can't figure out what else it could be. Since my son is totally non verbal, he can't tell me exactly what's hurting him. During the day, he's in a really good mood.

Answer 1

The ENT should be able to suction out his ear although this is not a pleasant experience. I don't know what omnicef is - but typically kids need an antibiotic to treat the ear infection. You could maybe try propping him up more at night since he seems fine during the day.

Answer 2

That is bad, when I get crusted stuff in my ear, I usually take the removable end of a ink pen and start gouging in there, ususally I come up empty, but other times I hit pay dirt. One thing you might try to put in the ears is a cheap product called Bactrecine, this should soften the crusted area.