5/05/2008 -- Ear infections are among the most common illnesses of early childhood. Three out of four children have had at least one ear infection by age 3, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.
The medical term for middle ear infections is otitis media. Otitis refers to inflammation of the ear, and media means middle.
Although ear infections worry parents and make children uncomfortable, take heart. Most ear infections clear up on their own within a few days, and most children stop having ear infections once they reach school age.
Signs and symptoms
Ear infections can be hard to detect, especially if your child is too young to say, "My ear hurts." Knowing what to look for can help. Children with ear infections may:
Tug or pull at their ears
Cry more than usual
Have trouble sleeping
Fail to respond to sounds
Be unusually irritable
Develop a fever
Develop fluid that drains from the ears
Have headaches
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5/05/2008 -- ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- When Andrea Buie-Branam brought her asthmatic baby to the nearest emergency room, she thought she was doing the right thing. But once she got there, she began to suspect she wasn't in the right place.
When they need an emergency room, Collin and Gillian Branam's mom takes them to one for kids.
The nurse put an adult-sized mask on 9-month-old Gillian (they didn't have anything else). The mask was huge, and Gillian couldn't easily inhale the medicine to treat her asthma attack, her mom says. Then they had a hard time getting Gillian's blood pressure because the adult cuff was gigantic on her tiny arm. Everything was geared to adults. "I asked, 'Don't you have a pediatrician here?' and the doctor told me, 'No, we don't keep a pediatrician in the emergency room.' "
Buie-Branam pledged she'd never let this happen again. When she got home, she looked around on the Internet for an ER geared to kids. She found one and took Gillian there when she had another attack a few months later.
"It was a completely different experience," she says. "It was fabulous." Three years later when Gillian's younger brother, Collin, had a strangulated hernia, Buie-Branam raced him to the same ER. "They called in a surgeon who specialized in pediatrics. He was right there," she says.
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Brave Kids was founded on June 9, 1999, by
Kristen Fitzgerald
, after
the loss of her two children to catastrophic illnesses.
The Brave Kids program has been approved by and is
linked to over 110 health organizations such as:
The National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners, The National Brain Tumor
Foundation, the National Pediatric AIDS Foundation, United Cerebral Palsy, and the
National Children's Cancer Society.
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His Holiness the Dalai Lama honored Brave Kids Founder and
President, Kristen Fitzgerald for her compassionate work at a
special Unsung Heroes of Compassion presentation.
Kristen received a special acknowledgement for her work with Brave Kids
from His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
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