The drain

I am considering this contraption instead of tubes next time around.

My daughter had her third ear surgery about two weeks before our little winter vacation. Tubes in. Adenoids out. Her recovery was bionic. An hour later she was wanting to go the school playground. No Tylenol. Nada. She did have a slight runny nose which I thought might complicate matters, but we pressed onward and she seemed to be on a steady course for total recovery.

Then her nose became a faucet. For two weeks we blew that thing dry. Except it never dried. It just kept running and running. And I thought, by God, she is surely losing gray matter at this rate. How much snot could possibly come out of her head? A lot of snot. Her nose became a portal to other worlds. The cleft above her lip became raw and peely. She was a vision of loveliness.

It appears her small nostrils simply could not handle the flow of gunk and soon her ears began to drain. Sticky, stinky, infected ear gunk began pouring out the side of her head. She'd wake up with hair stuck to her face in every direction, cemented on by this stuff.

And I'm thinking, I want my money back on that surgery. She's turned into the spawn of Frankenstein because of that damned surgery. And it's not just the goop. Her moods have left the rest of us drained. She saw her otologist and came home with antibiotics but this is where the real drain begins. Having to put drops in her ears three times a day and getting her to wear her hair in pigtails so that the slime doesn't get tangled up in her hair is totally exhausting. Three friggin times a day I have to explain again the importance of this rigmarole. And every time she protests. We are on day ten and I am about to bleed out my own ears from all the drama. I think what we need is a plumber.