Any advice on how to prepare ds for his operation?

[macwoozy]

In several weeks time, my ds has to go into hospital for squint surgery. Hopefully he's just in for the day but if he does stay overnight I'm allowed to stay in with him. Problem is, I know I'm going to have a real battle on my hands just getting him through the door. He's allowed to check the place over a week or so before but I'm not really sure if that's the best thing to do, one look at the place and I might never be able to encourage him to go back. His anxiety levels are sky high at the mo, nothing to do with the prospect of hospital, but I think it's the whole change of routine at school with Xmas approaching. I've had to mention to him that his eyes might be sticky after the op and he ran around screaming, I haven't got the heart to tell him his eyes might be sore too and that he'll have to have regular eye drops.

Any advice how I can make it easier for him, I can just see him having a meltdown as soon as we approach the hospital with no chance of surgery going ahead. I've got a book about hospitals but that is just stressing him out even more.

Oh dear, poor little thing.
Will briobes work.
A trail of sweets leading into the hospital!
Take all his fav toys with you.
Maybe don't talk about it too much in his presence.
Any DVDs that inc hosputals that you could buy cheaply from the amazon marketplace?
Who is his fav person, other than you, a granparent, get them to come with you on the day as well.
Talk about it as a big adventure, that it's a really cool and exciting thing that is going to happen and he's a very lucky boy, smile and laugh and be massivley upbeat and happy about it.

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A trail of sweets leading to the hospital

I've been bribing him for the past month, so far we've agreed on two Nintendo ds games, but as soon as the subject of the operation comes up he just panics and he couldn't care less about any game. I think you might have a good point with talking about it less when he's around, I do tend to bring it up quite a lot with him lately, I suppose I'm hoping that the more I talk about it, the more he'll come to terms with it. Maybe I should just back off for a while.

Thanks for all your ideas TeeCee, I'll give them a go

Good luck, let us know how you get on.

macwoozy - if the hospital, or your GP, understand, would there be any medication he could take temporarily to calm him down? Slight sedative for the day?

This might be wildly inappropriate, if so, apologies.

Blu, this has crossed my mind, I actually had this conversation with dp last night, I will bring it up on our pre appt, if it means it's the only way I can get ds to have this operation then it might be the only option, feel uncomfortable with it though.