Profiles in courage?

So Samson has an ear infection. And pink eye. The latter we knew about, since he had the viral form --- i.e., the kind that doesn't need antibiotics --- last week and now has the bacterial form, which does. Or maybe it's the other way around. In any case, the poor kid has brown goop on his eyelids, and we now need to put drops in them. The doctor suggested doing it while he's asleep. When Vicki pressed him on this, he said: "You wait until he's asleep and then one of you opens his eyelid and the other puts in the drops."

This is a child who is afraid of his curtains in the dark. Something tells me two shadows entering the room, prying open his eyelids, and dropping in liquid will not be well received. That said, we're bound to get at least one eye done before the screaming begins. I'll let you know how it goes.

Speaking of screaming, Samson has been having a hard time hearing us of late. Once again, Vicki called the doctor two weeks ago and was assured that it was part of a head cold and would right itself. It didn't, and in fact, the poor kid has probably only been hearing us with one ear for a week now. Which, given the past week's tally of time-outs for ignoring us, might explain a lot.

Anyway, the good doctor needed to use a metal tool to remove wax that was beyond the reach of a mere Q-tip. [Sidenote: Not that I want Samson to have special impacted wax in his ear, but it made me feel better that this was something I couldn't have fixed had I been better about cleaning his ears after bath time.] As you can imagine, the insertion of a lance into his ear did not sit well with young Samson.

I was on hand to hold him still, which I did. Mission accomplished, the doctor decided to show me what he'd found, which was a tiny, waxy, bloody kernel. Now I have a pretty strong stomach, or at least I used to, but at the sight of that --- combined with the wailing child in my arms and the fact that the office was like a kiln --- I almost passed out. I could feel my stomach drop and all the blood drain from my head as if someone had just pulled the plug.

I tried my best to be attentive while Sam's doctor showed us some illustrations of the ear and what healthy versus infected ears look like. He made a point of getting a book to give us all the details. All of which was kind. And thorough. And totally unnecessary. I'm already squeamish about ears [don't ask], and I just wanted to get the hell out of there.

So Vicki is on her way to the pharmacy, Samson is enjoying a well-deserved lollipop, and Jane, sweet Jane, is (as usual) along for the ride. She watched all of the above-mentioned action pretty intently.

I imagine behind that big sweet smile she was thinking: "better him than me."