Sandra Ashenford reflects on the ups and downs of her week

THIS week has been dominated by ear-ache, which is a nasty, irritating pain that you simply cannot escape.

It wasn’t my ear-ache, it was daughter number four, but obviously I suffered alongside because there is nothing worse than being a mother who can’t make it better.

In this case, the ‘it’ was a nasty cold that included a high temperature, runny nose and aching limbs. As the temperature subsided, the daughter was left with a painful ear that no amount of medicine seemed able to touch.

While some children are prone to ear infections, or other childhood ailments, daughter number four has been extremely lucky in generally suffering from nothing worse than mild colds and skin that sometimes comes out it a rash when in contact with certain substances.

Such things require very little treatment and are generally within my capacity to deal with, in terms of practical advice and sympathy levels.

My family knows me as a notoriously poor nurse who will dole out paracetamol and concern for a maximum of about 24 hours before relapsing into ‘pull yourself together mode’.

On this occasion, I managed to stretch the sympathy to about two days before having to admit that there was nothing more that could be done, and therefore she needed to stop complaining.

We had even ventured up to our doctor’s surgery although, as usual, we failed to see a doctor. We did see a practice nurse, who was very nice but essentially told the daughter to just keep taking the medicine.

We sought further advice from local pharmacists and it was one of these who gave the best recommendation when he suggested using a warm wheat-bag over the ear. The daughter found this very soothing and it definitely helped her to sleep better. We have discovered, however, that there is a very fine line between a warm wheat-bag, and one which emerges from the microwave too hot to touch. Meanwhile, lots of people shared stories with her about their experiences of ear-ache and tooth-ache, which is a similar problem and just as horrible.

No-one had any magic cures though. The general consensus is that you just have to tough it out, which is a useful life-skill to develop even if it’s not much fun.