They can't make you have pain relief, can they?

[ardenbird]

I get worried when I read things like women being pressured into pethidine or gas & air when they don't want it. I'm hoping that if you really don't want particular things they wouldn't do something like jab you with analgesic when you don't want it, right? And you'd have to breath in the gas & air, right? Is it more being badgered into agreeing to something someone would have not agreed to if they were in less pain and able to think more clearly?

I'm concerned because I know I have bad reactions to pethidine and gas & air (got pethidine at an outpatient procedure and ended hospitalised for the dehydration brought on by constant vomiting, when I got home I was incapable for 3 more days; gas & air produced immediate vomiting, never got enough of it to tell how bad it could be!). I'm pretty sure I'd have to be in awful lot of pain before I agreed to go through something like the pethidine experience again (and it's not like one's abdominal muscles are all peachy-fine after vomiting for four days).

I'm prepared for medically necessary things, but for just pure pain relief, I hope that as long as you continue to say "no", they can't force it on you? I have no idea how much a wimp about pain I'll be, but I already know I'm a super-wimp about feeling nauseated (I moaned throughout the first trimester, although I know mine wasn't nearly as bad as some), and am absolutely terrified of being as ill as I was with pethidine ever again.

Thanks everyone! DH has chimed in with the info that during my pethidine experience, where I lost about 3 hrs time after the shot, I continued to scream my head off in pain the whole time (he was a fairly recent BF at the time, really good to come with me to the hospital as I had no one else, but perhaps why he didn't mention the screaming back then...) . So it looks like in addition to making me sick, it didn't actually help with the pain. That, plus the stuff in the pethidine and diamorphine threads make me believe that I'm unlikely to get any useful pain relief from such drugs, so it's not really a trade-off of potential illness vs pain relief, it might just be risk potential illness for no particular reason.

I guess for me I'm more scared of the after-effects of drugs than I am of the pain -- whatever my body is going through in labour will exist whether or not I feel it, but drug reactions wouldn't exist without the drugs. Since I've currently got at least one life long repercussion from a drug reaction, and my chronic condition may in fact be one too, I find trying unknown drugs a bit scary. But the report of my screaming behaviour doesn't give me great confidence in my ability to handle pain! Although, remembering how much just the exploratory ultrasound before that procedure hurt, it might have been a good bit of pain. I guess I had better make sure I practice my breathing and relaxation real well.