Asked to provide own painkillers!

[Insertdeadcatsnamehere]

I've got an elective ceasarean booked in a couple of weeks. Have just had the consent form and info through and I've been asked to provide my own painkillers (for on the recovery ward afterwards, I'm still, possibly naively, assuming they'll provide the actual anaesthetic). Absolutely speechless! Just wondering whether anyone has had any comparable (but not female- specific) surgery and has been asked this? Apparently if I forget to bring my paracetamol and ibruprofen I can toddle down to the onsite pharmacy a couple of hours after my major abdominal surgery and purchase some. So that's helpful. No word on whether they'd sell me anything stronger...

In the supermarket a paracetamol tablet is about 1p per tablet. On the NHS it's 3p per tablet

Why can't the NHS get them as cheap as supermarkets?

I got told off by the hospital midwife for taking my own paracetamol post birth because they needed to keep notes of any meds taken incase anything happened and they unknowingly exceded dosages.

"However you have elected to have a caesarean"

Well there's an implied judgement there isn't there?! Would I get a medal if I tried for a VBAC I've been advised against, put 2 people's lives at risk and probably ended up with a section anyway?

I always take my own paracetamol. Omeprazole and other simple meds.
The alternative is. To ask for pain killer.
Wait half an hour for someone to answer the buster.
Get told you aren't prescribed anything for pain.
Then wait 2 hours doe it to be prescribed. Then wait another couple of hours for someone to notice it's been prescribed and have time to give it.
All the while you are in pain.
Now just take my own commoners I k ow I'll need.
But some advice hide it. Otherwise they lock it away .
Obviously let them know you've taken it if you need something stronger.

To clarify, this is whilst an in-patient as opposed to them prescribing you take home medication on discharge?

15 years ago was told to pack these as part of hospital bag - though surgery wasn't a given in my case and in end I didn't have it but it was standard to be told to take them in for all labours.

Friends who ended up with c-sections were given proper pain relief in addition to what they took in - I assume they ran taking their own past staff but never occurred to me to ask.

DH had surgery years later and was sent home with a bag of pain killers.

@jessstan1 I think you may have misunderstood the term ‘elective caesarean’ This means the surgery is planned (and can be for myriad medical reasons), not that someone has chosen it on a whim. Either way, I would expect adequate post operative pain relief.

@Insertdeadcatsnamehere I think the back pain meds you have already been given should do the job. FYI I’ve had easy success with GP prescribing post-birth pain relief. I just phoned and requested. I agree that it’s a bit weird you’ve been asked to bring your own.

So is this a trust wide policy that anyone going for major abdominal surgery has to bring their own OTC painkillers?

Are they telling everyone to pop a paracetamol and get on with it? So that’s all appendectomy patients can expect as well? Or those getting kidney stones out? Or hernia surgery?

How is this not discriminatory?

Haven't rtft but I had a csection about 10 months ago and I was provided with all painkillers while I was an in patient (and thankfully it was a good deal stronger than paracetamol and ibuprofen!)

That's really weird, I thought bringing your own meds was a big no-no - they could interfere with whatever else they're giving you. Even something over the counter can be nasty if you have too much at once.

This said if you can manage your pain without them - the better. I was given absolutely nothing through my first three days of induced labour - agony - and then after the emergency c-section they kept waking me up all the time to offer me bloody paracetamol, and by that point - five days without sleep plus major surgery - I needed the sleep a lot more than I needed a tablet. It would have been a relief to not have had them push that drugs trolley in my face several times a day and night.

It's like the post-natal ward had a check list of "offer patient pain relief four times a day whether then need it or not" while the induction ward must have had a strict "they're all fakers, give them nothing" policy.

I read that offering more pain relief after birth was to ease the pain of breast-feeding, so for the benefit of the infant, not the actual human who just gave birth. Sexism through and through.

@Insertdeadcatsnamehere please be careful about smuggling in medication and taking it under the radar. Sometimes they'll hand you a pot of pain relief and it could have an interaction with what you've already taken. God forbid something happened and you passed out having taken your own pain relief and they gave you more of the same thing IM/IV. I'm sure you're aware of that though.

Best of luck with the caesarean.

Yes this is for immediately afterwards, I wasn't expecting to be sent home with anything (although as far as I know you would be with any other procedure). Was hoping for (although not really expecting) some effective pain relief as an inpatient immediately post surgery so to see that that's unlikely to be an option and then being asked to take my own in on top of that seems extremely dismissive in a way that i'm pretty sure wouldn't happen for anything else - my partner has had a smallish cyst removed and been given heavy duty stuff to take home by the same hospital trust so I'm wondering if this is standard.

The NHS has a weird attitude to saving money. My father, who is in a wheelchair and has dementia, was seriously ill last year and, once he was over the worst, was moved to a rehab hospital. A couple of times he had to go back to the first hospital for a check up. Both times I went with him; both times he had a private ambulance to himself both ways, accompanied by two lovely ambulance men, both times there was absolutely no point in him being there because he wasn't examined and couldn't answer any of the doctors' questions. They could have achieved precisely the same by having a quick chat with me on the phone or, even better, by talking to the nurses on the rehab ward. So a lot of money was spent on a couple of expensive trips out. But the NHS begrudges women a couple of quid on painkillers after major surgery?

I think it might be worth clarifying with the hospital about what pain relief options you will be offered post-surgery.

I read this as saying they recommend you bring your own paracetamol (so they don’t have to prescribe it)... I don’t think it means they won’t prescribe other drugs you can’t get over the counter?

It was both the hospital and community MW who told mothers to pack over the counter pain relief - and it was all mother's being told - well everyone I spoke to was told. It was a big northern city hospital.

The ward let me go 24 hours with no food despite bf a baby and it was hard enough to get water so maybe there just knew how shit it was.

I just had paracetamol after my 2nd section. It was okay, in fact. After the first I was full of v strong painkillers and they were awful, so preferred the paracetamol. Pain was okay, and I don't have a high pain threshold.

But odd you're being asked to bring your own - I have read it costs a fortune for the NHS to provide paracetamol and v cheap to buy, but still seems off.

Frankly, on all my surgeries I would rather have been allowed to bring my own painkillers and take them on my schedule than being huffed at if I dared to ask for any. On an orthopedic ward I was told off roundly for causing a fuss after major surgery and made to wait hours for pain killers while screaming in agony. You 'weren't allowed' to go home on tramadol or morphine either, so I had to go straight from hospital to GP to get help as I couldn't think straight

This is also a big northern city hospital...

DS (age 4) had tonsils removed 4 years ago and we had to provide his post operative pain relief (Calpol and liquid ibuprofen). They did prescribe oramorph, presumably because we can't buy this ourselves. When DD (age 3) had a hernia repair the year before, Calpol was provided by the hospital pharmacy fir her to take home.

There is definitely a really strange attitude to prescribing pain relief. I hate the way any request for pain relief is treated with suspicion. As if you're going to spit the tablets out when no one is looking and then toddle off to the front of the hospital to sell them to a local gang member.

DH has just had a kidney removed, by conventional surgery, not keyhole, a 27cm incision. He had an epidural amd morphine imeadiately following the op but after that just paracetamol. It's cheap and easily available so people think "only" but it's actually very effective. It wasn't until he started on the paracetamol they got his pain under control.

They did provide it while he was in hospital though.

@Insertdeadcatsnamehere not standard practice ime. I'd be interested in their rationale (other than the obvious cost efficiencies) for doing so given, in my mind, there are potentially a number of safety issues. Most units prescribe post section women liquid morphine for at least 24 hours unless they intend to give you a large dose intravenously.

I had a c-section and I was given morphine the first day but felt woozy so asked that I did not receive it from the second day and got co-comodol instead.

How are you supposed to manage with just OTC painkillers? Trying to sit up or get out of bed is excruciating. A "ladder" helps you to get up out of bed so that all the weight is borne by your arms not the muscles in your abdomen but it still bloody hurts.

Is this the situation in just maternity or elsewhere in hospitals?

Also to add the hospital that gave me only paracetamol provided very top class care. Far better than the one that threw hard-core painkillers at me. So medically speaking I feel that they gave me the best choice of drugs. I could be naive!

I only got offered paracetamol after my emcs. Post op on night 2 I dragged myself out and asked for something stronger they never suggested so I didn't think I could have anything. I was naive, preoccupied and just did what they told me I didn't want to make a fuss My son had 3 hour surgery on his genitals twice and both times we had to bring in pain relief for recovery so it does happen with other departments too.

Liquid morphine?! Feeling a bit like I was robbed, now!. And yes we were made to get up and get our own breakfast the morning after.