Perforated ear drum - ongoing problem. Can anybody help?

[Tiredallofthetime]

DS (2 in less than a fortnight - how did that happen?) suffers from perforated ear drums. It’s awful when it happens: there is discharge and pus running from his ear down his face and it’s obviously very painful for him - calpol and ibuprofen doesn’t really seem to address the pain.

When it first happened I took him to the GP, who prescribed antibiotics. These didn’t really make any difference and so I took him back. I wasn’t massively impressed by the GP, to be honest, so DH and I decided to go private to see an ENT. This has been helpful insofar as we have drops that clear up the discharge but it just keeps happening.

It really affects him - he’s normally such a happy little boy but he becomes notably grumpy, he pushes and is impatient and not kind to other children at nursery, his sleep is poor.

Is there any sort of solution to this? It’s horrible seeing your child in pain

Ds had ear infections from 10 weeks until his first grommets (aged 20 months) then perforated ear drums from when the first set of grommets came out until his second set (aged 3.5yo).

I was told that for a perforated ear drum antibiotics are a good idea because there is a "hole rather close to the brain" so they want to make sure the infection doesn't go deeper. It doesn't generally decrease the infection time hugely but it does, hopefully protect against further infection. They sometimes choose to swab the gunk to help identify the best antibiotic to combat it.

To be referred for grommets I think you need something like 8 ear infections in 6 months. If I say ds probably had double that, and with the perforated ear drums he had 8 in 2 months. His hearing was also affected.

For most children it clears up without intervention. Ds had three lots of grommets in the end and still gets the occasional ear infection at 15yo.

Things that helped are warmth on the ear. Encouraging drinking (the swallowing sometimes helps). Painkillers. Lots of cuddles. And the grommets.

Another thing that helped once was ds getting a double course of antibiotics. he'd had an infection that was reoccurring as soon as the antibiotics stopped so the Gp gave him a double dose and that cleared it up.