Wednesday, February 27, 2008

WFMW: Earache Pain Relief

This past weekend, we had a bout of ear ache pain ... severe ear ache pain. Hunter woke up screaming, and proceeded to scream the whole night away. Tylenol and Motrin were both to weak to touch the pain.

The next day, I did a search on ear ache relief, and got a great idea. One woman said she wrapped a pile of salt in a wash cloth and heated it up in the microwave... the first thing that came to my mind was ... "that's like a rice pack. HEY!!! A rice pack!"

So, I got a baby wash cloth, poured a mound of DRY rice in it, added a couple drops of good-smelling essential oil (because hot dry rice just smells bad!), and tied it off with a piece of ribbon. Nothing fancy, nor expensive... yet, once I heated it up in the microwave and held it up against Hunter's ear, you could see the comfort set in.

Just be careful when you heat it. You only want to heat it for 10 seconds, pull it out, mush the rice around, and if it is too cool, heat for another 5 to 10 seconds more. Essentially, it can either be heated, or placed in the freezer for a versatile home made boo boo bunny. (picture below was taken with my phone camera, so it is blurry -- sorry!)

So, that's what worked for me in a crisis! Head on over to Rocks in my Dryer for more tips of all kinds!

7 comments:

El Shaddai Ranch said...

Great idea! The other thing that works is garlic oil. You can buy it in liquid form or you can actually use the oil from a clove of garlic. This has worked for us the last 8 years.

Anonymous said...

Salt also works well because it helps draw moisture out of the ear, which can cause the infection. I hadn't heard of rice before, glad to hear that works too!

Donnetta said...

What a great idea! I will definately be keeping this in mind if we have earaches again at our place!

What a great tip!

Praying everyone is feeling better every day!!

Mamacita said...

I will really have to remember this! Thanks!

Tara said...

Oooh, what a great idea! We don't get many earaches around here anymore, but that would be great for icing down owies!

Barb said...

Great idea, GiBee. I hope Pam over at Without Fear sees this. She's got the mother of all ear infections, including a perforated eardrum, poor thing.

I remember when I was little, my mother heated oil (probably castor oil since she thought that cured absolutely everything) and put it in our ears to relieve earache pain. This definitely is a tidier approach!

Stacey said...

Great idea! We could actually use this right now... Seth has a double and Jake has a single! Fun times :o)