Smelly child

For the last few days, my 4-yo daughter Camila’s head has been smelling quite badly, sort of like rotten fish. We were traveling in the Yucatan, going from cenotes to the pool to the sea, and never quite getting a good shower, so we thought it was environmental smell, easily eliminated by a good bath. Well, we tried it yesterday morning and it didn’t work – she soon started stinking again.
The smell was so bad by last night that I was worried she might be sick. I tried to localize it, but I couldn’t, I could smell it more strongly around her head, and it seemed to come from her sweat. That worried me, as one of my sisters suffered from kidney disease and you could smell urea on her skin and breath when her kidneys were malfunctioning. This smell was different, but it made me quite anxious.
I called the nurse advise line, but under the premise that the smell was coming from her sweat, the nurse could not help me at all – she had never heard of that happening and couldn’t find any references to it. So, I kept looking online and found a discussion that mentioned that bad smell in little children could signify an ear infection. Indeed, Camila had had some discharge from her ears a few days before, while swimming at a cenote, and she’s had tubes put on her ears, so an ear infection made sense. I went to smell her again, and indeed the smell was strongest in her left ear.
Today we took her to the pediatrician and confirmed that, indeed, she has an ear infection (her first, I think). She’s been prescribed some antibiotics and she’ll be fine, but I thought I would share this information with the world, in case another worried parent searches for reasons their small child smells bad.
The pediatrician told me that it’s advisable for children with tubes in their ears to wear ear plugs while swimming – in particular in less-than-clean water sources, like cenotes. This is no longer standard advise, too bad we didn’t get it before.