Childs operation nightmare

[TracyG1980]

My 14 year old daughter has been in severe pain on and off for almost 2 years with numerous visits to GP and local hospital - all resulting in different diagnosis or no diagnosis at all.

This all came to a head 3 weeks ago when the pain got worse and i tokk her to hopsital twice on the same day with us eventually being told it was her appendix.

Next morning my daughter was taken to surgery and had her appendix removed and her tummy cleared out duer to leakage from the ruptured appendix.

When she woke from the surgery she was in agony, after filling her with pain relief the doctor confirmed that they had forgotten to give her any pain relief during surgery and she hadn't had anything for more than 4 hours when she had received ibruprofen.

The trauma to my daughter has been horrifc with her wakening a night thinking she can feel the pain.

i have searched online to see if i can find another case of surgery being performed with no pain relief but cannot find anything - has anyone else ever heard of this?

That sounds horrendous, I'd complain via PALS and ask for a review. I hope she feels better soon!

i have now complained in the hope that another child doesn't have to go through that, was over 30 mins after waking her from surgery that she finally got pain medication.

The complaint is being dealt with by the Complaints Manager at the hospital - should i be complaining to PALS instead?

It's the anaesthetist's job to make sure their patient has pain relief during surgery. How did they forget?

Complain.

In the nightmares front it's still early days at only three weeks so I would try and reassure your daughter that this is her brain processing what happened so it can file it away into her memory archives as something that happened in the past.

She could try dream visualisation. Before she goes to bed build a picture of how she would want the dream to play out instead of how it normally does - e.g. Somebody giving her pain relief or instead of feeling pain feeling warm and cosy. Give it as much detail as possible and focus on how it feels in the alternative version. Revisit that alternative ending again when she wakes up if she has a nightmare.

It sounds a bit weird but it helps some people. You can Google it for more info.

Oh, if the complaint is already being handled I would see the process through and are what outcome they reach.

Someone should have been with her when she woke up to deal with any pain on waking as soon as she became aware.

Yes, i have now been told that the anaesthetist should never have allowed her to be woken without having adequate pain relief. The whole thing was barbaric.

I will defo try dream visualisation with her and hope that helps - i'll have a look online for some tips.

As you say, we are very early days so im just hoping this all passes.

She is now saying that she doesn't want children incase she needs to have a c-section

she remembers when she woke up she instantly started screaming for me and someone said "just take her upstair to her mum" then someone else said "she hasn't had anything yet" assuming they meant pain relief however they proceeded to bring her up to the ward prior to adminstering anything.

When she came onto the ward she was covered in red blotches and struggling with breathing due to the stress and pain which all settled within 10 minutes of her getting the pain relief.

Oh goodness, how awful. Honestly, I would be pushing for her to be referred to a trauma specialist as a matter of urgency.

i should have an appointment with the clinician within the month they said to discuss what has happened and why but i may actually ask for a refferal to a specialist prior to that

Oh your poor baby. Make sure the team refer you to the Clinical Psychologist (either one at the hospital or CAMHS). It's too soon to say at the moment, but she is at risk of PTSD.

she has really been struggling with getting to sleep at night since it but i was just putting it down to change in routine and thought it would have settled now that she is back at school but after having this chat i wonder if its possibly to do with the trauma of it all

Which doctor told you they’d ‘forgotten’ the pain relief?

Doctor on the ward when she checked her record after she was passed over to them. Initially she was shocked at the pain she was in but on seeing her notes she understood why - she also went and double checked as she wasn't sure if it was a mistake.
The nurses were all talking about it after the fact as well.

I would get it confirmed from the/an anaesthetist that nothing was given at all. Analgesia is part of the anaesthetic not just an afterthought and to have not given anything at all would be extremely uncommon, but to have given something that a non-anaesthetist might not fully understand is not so uncommon. There are of times when despite the signs being that we’ve got the pain relief right while someone’s still asleep (based on the way we monitor things intraoperatively) patients still wake up in pain and not responding to that is suboptimal.

Hope you get some resolution to your questions from the team that looked after your daughter and that she’s well again soon.

So i did question this and was told that the last pain relief she had received according to her notes was at 11am (Ibuprofen) - she came out of surgery nearer 2pm. The doctor said she had to check this just in case there had been a mistake and it was right enough.

With the pain she was in prior to getting the morphine etc i do believe that she hadn't had anything - it was horrible.

When the consultant came in i mentioned it and she said she would need to go speak to the anaesthetist about it as that shouldn't have happened but she never came back to me on it.

Sue them

Having had several surgeries, including removal of a ruptured appendix, I can tell you that the appendix pain was by far the worst. As soon as I got a dose of morphine in the recovery room I felt better.
If your DD had pain relief at eleven am, she would not have been due more until three pm. The anaesthetist would probably have written up for her to have some as needed. I'm surprised she was returned to the ward if she was in so much pain, that usually doesn't happen, even if she was asking for you. Anaesthetics do weird things to people, and if this was her first, you may well have been shocked at how she responded. My DF was almost psychotic when he came out of surgery!
I would try to keep calm with your DD, don't tell her anything that isn't proven, as she may hang to that. You should get an appointment to discuss your complaint, give the hospital time to investigate what went wrong. I'm sure she'll feel much better soon. It took me a good month to recover from my appendectomy due to the rupture and infection.

Thanks for this. I personally haven't had my appendix out so wasn't really sure about the level of pain however she is usually not a bad sufferer so I cld tell she was feeling it very bad.

The doctor said she should have had morphine as she was down for that every 3 or 4 hours and hadn't had it since 9 am so I think this was where the surprise came from with the doctor.

It will be interesting to hear what the clinician has to say.