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When my daughter was 3 months old she got her first ear infection. Antibiotics. Three days off of them and she got another one. More antibiotics. This went on for more than a year and a half.

For the last year the drs put her on prophylactic antibiotics. Bloody diarrhea, yeast infections, fungal skin rashes. She’s already had two ruptured ear drums and her hearing was impaired.

I was 21 years old and this was before the internet was a ‘thing’. I trusted the drs.

Until she got thrush so bad that they said it was going to kill her and wanted to do a DNC.

By this time I’d been told about tubes in the ears. I asked the dr if I understood the situation clearly.

“She has chronic ear infections. We’re keeping her on antibiotics to prevent them. But the antibiotics are causing fungal infections and now you’re telling me that my 21 month old needs a DNC and is probably already sterile. Would it not be a better solution to treat the yeast, take her off the antibiotics, and get her the tubes ASAP?”

The dr agreed that this was preferable. Then he went on to tell me that there were only one American dr in Germany who did the tubes for military families, he only did two a month, and there was a 18 month waiting list. So we couldn’t take her off the antibiotics until then. The dr informed us that TriCare wouldn’t pay for the procedure unless this dr did it.

I called every family member and friend that we had and asked for money, gathered up all the credit cards and had the companies extend the limits, then flew my daughter back to the states to get her tubes. A pediatric ENT took pity on us and got her in just a couple of days after we landed. We went broke, but we paid for the surgery ourselves.

She didn’t have antibiotics again until she was six and contracted antibiotic resistant strep from her school. That was in 1998. She ended up hospitalized with the ‘drug of last resort’ then getting her tonsils out. That strain of strep was not bred in her body, but in her classmates.

In my experience, the drs of the ‘80s and ‘90s were passing this crap out like candy. I agree that there are pushy parents, but the ultimate liability falls on the professional’s shoulders.