@WhipperSnapperSteve
How do you know you only received the standard sedation?
Dosages noted on my patient letter.
I do a lot of work with sedation, so can possibly give some context. You are not my patient, so none of this should be taken as specific medical advice to your circumstances.
There is no such thing as a 'standard dose' of Midazolam/Fentanyl. Patient response varies hugely. So what we do is start with a small dose and then titrate to effect, by giving a little bit more, then a little bit more, then a little bit more, til the patient is in the sweet spot.
I have treated rugby players who are there after a dribble of the stuff, and 16 year old girls who need a bucketfull. It's a bit like alcohol - some people are 12 pint people, and some are under the table after a pint and a half. You can make an educated guess by looking at them, but you won't know for sure til you take them drinking.
I also have patients who are totally calm and relaxed whilst very lightly sedated, and others who need to be significantly more deeply sedated to allow any care.
It is hugely variable. The art is getting the dosing right, because it takes around 15 minutes to hit maximum effect, and you can't exactly suck the stuff out if you've given too much.
It is the first line choice of sedative drug because it is very safe for most people, and works very well for most people. There's a big window between an effective dose and a dangerous dose. None the less, too much can slow or stop your breathing, so it's not possible to simply keep giving more til you're deep enough to cope. You can very easily get into an unmonitored GA by doing that, which is dangerous.
It's not possible to tell from the dosages in a letter that you received the "standard sedation", because the appropriate dose varies so much from patient to patient. When I have to abandon treatment (which happens to all of us) it's because I recognise that giving the patient more of that drug will not override their anxiety and risks compromising their breathing. That may happen at a low dose. It may be at a high one. It varies from person to person.
It is recognised that Midazolam/Fentanyl does have a failure rate, but it is the first line approach for all the reasons given above.
I would add that I hate failing to complete treatment on a patient. It always feels like I've failed them. I don't know if it makes you feel any better or not, but I can be confident that the team involved wanted it to work and feel bad that it didn't.
In contrast, Propofol has a much smaller margin between safe and unsafe, so needs to be given by more skilled and experienced hands, with greater back up support. That means fewer services offer it and there's a longer wait. Given you have said that this procedure was urgent I can understand why Propofol may not have been available to you. Particularly if this was in the last few months: generally those who give Propofol are those with anaesthetic training, who may not have been available to sedation services because of Covid.
This is a roundabout way of saying that, whilst it is clearly miserable that you had a bad experience, it doesn't follow that that the team did anything wrong. To sue successfully you would have to establish that they did something wrong and you suffered harm because of it. It may be that that is so, but it's not obvious from what you've said. So you'd have to take careful advice before deciding whether suing is likely to be successful.
I agree with thsoe who've said that addressing the underlying cause of your distress, which relates to your assault, it likely to be the way you will feel better in the long run. It sucks that you have to do that. It's not fair. I'm sorry. But that's likely to bring you more healing than getting tied up in a protracted legal battle.