Ear infection advice

[LanaL]

Hi
My son ( autistic , health anxiety , hates doctors etc , won’t tell us if he feels really ill ) has an ear infection. It started Friday , he said it felt like he had water in his ear . He then had pain , had a telephone appointment with the doctor and they prescribed a spray but the chemist closed before I got there so I couldn’t get it. Yesterday it was worse ( a lot of discharge from his ear ) and he had a temp . Took him to the doctors yesterday afternoon and they looked , said it was an infection and gave him antibiotics. Last night his temp was still high ( 38.8 at highest ) this morning it’s slowly gone down to a normal temperature, still having discharge but seems a bit better however his ear looks swollen behind and it sounds awful but I don’t know if it was swollen when he was at the doctors yesterday .

I have health anxiety myself and I’m the type to always take the children to the doctors if I’m worried and I do overreact . I know taking him would make him extremely anxious so I’m just after some advice really - is this normal with an ear infection ? Should I give the antibiotics a chance before I go back ?

Give the abs a chance

I'm not a medic, but I suffered with frequent ear infections as a child and so did all of my children. If sounds like your sons is heading in the right direction. The antibiotics will take at least 3 days to work. If his temperature goes back up or he gets severe pain get him checked again, but at the moment it sound like he's getting better.

Thank you both . Think I needed to hear others say that ! X

If it’s swollen behind the ear that can be quite serious - if it is mastoiditis he’ll need IV ABs https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/mastoiditis/

The discharge might be from a burst ear drum due to the infection. It does heal itself.

Antibiotics take a couple of days to get to work. If there's discharge I'd not use the spray as that's more for otitis externa infection, but call and check with the GP whether to use both or not.

Thank you .

The swelling has gone down a bit , the ear isn’t as red and no pain or temperature today . Still leaking but not as much so hopefully that means the antibiotics are working x