Not-So-Pretty in Pink

For his 5th birthday, apparently Luke decided to contract pink eye for the first time ever. Joy. What is it with him and illnesses for his birthday? He got his first ear infection for his 2nd birthday, and now pink eye for his 5th. Not sure if he got it at school or the doctor's office (either is equally likely, I think), but it showed up bright and early Saturday morning. Thank goodness we had his birthday party last weekend!!

We did not feel comfortable waiting until the pediatrician's office opened on Monday for him to be seen, so we went back to the Minute Clinic that treated his ear infection back in February. I did not know that pink eye could be either bacterial or viral. Since there really isn't much you can do to treat the viral kind (besides wait for it to pass), he would have been considered contagious for much longer with the viral version. Thankfully, the viral test came back negative, so we are treating it as bacterial conjunctivitis. They called in the prescription antibiotic drops to our pharmacy, and we were all set.

That is, until we actually tried to administer the drops. He fussed about it on principle for several minutes, and then once I finally got the first drop in, he started *screaming.* I don't ever remember the drops hurting like that, but he insisted they did. And that was just one drop in one eye. He was supposed to have 2 drops in *each* eye. Yeah, that was fun. And we're supposed to do this every 4 hours for a week?! I thought it might get better once the inflammation started going away, but it's been a day and a half now, and he's still screaming just as much, if not more. We finally had to literally hold him down and do them before bed tonight. And I'm going to have to go to school every day and give them to him there at lunch time. It's going to be a very long week.

Currently feeling: hating pink eye!