Ok. I’m annoyed. Well-probably a little more than annoyed.
My 19 year old had oral surgery yesterday afternoon, and it was pretty extensive-he had a canine exposure, which is that his adult canine tooth never erupted, so they had to go in, remove a good chunk of his hard palate, find the adult tooth hiding in his jaw. Then add an appliance to it that will slowly pull it down. They had to shave bone and he’s got 18 sutures in his mouth.
The whole thing took 3 hours-he had no sedation, just lidocaine and marcaine-if I had it to do over I’d probably ask them to give him nitros or sedation if no other option. It was a long, painful procedure for him. He also bled a lot more than was expected.
We finally get ready to leave and the surgeon tells me she’s going to call in a rx for ibuprofen 800mg. I’m thinking, “well-ok, I get they’re cracking down on pain meds-but this was a hell of a procedure” so I said “I feel like he had some pretty extensive work done, do you think ibuprofen will manage his pain ok for the first 24-36 hours?” She seemed almost nervous, definitely flustered-but still super friendly and said “oh he’ll be fine, he’ll be fine.”
Liar.
At around 8pm, by the time the numbing had worn off, my kid was misssseraaable. I gave him ibuprofen with acetaminophen in between-no. Not cutting it. And I’m kicking myself because I KNEW it wasn’t going to be enough-I mean, tooth extraction, huge chunk of gum removed, bone shaving, 18 sutures…come on, Allie, you know better than that. Not to mention people get one tooth pulled and walk out with a weeks worth of narcotic pain meds.
I called the on call Dr who just plain would not call back-thank GOD my mother in law is an APRN, because she took one look at him and could see how miserable he was, and took care of an rx for him. I just don’t think it should have come to that-I don’t know what this oral surgeons deal was, and I get drug seekers and overprescribing are problems. But sometimes it is medically appropriate to rx pain control. He’s opiate naive so you know what? 3-5 Tylenol 3 would have gotten him thru the first 24-36 hours, and it’s a schedule 3 for cripes sake. But no.
So-I called the on call dentist again this morning, because I wanted them to prescribe my son appropriate pain control. I explained his procedure-the dentist says “oh yes, I can definitely help him”-I’m like thank you so much, I really appreciate it…yeah, no. Naproxen. Are. You. Serious. This place is going to hear it from me.
My MIL (APRN) was giving him a half of a pill at a time-and I was trying to take the responsibility off of her shoulders and put it where it belonged. Thank god for my MIL. I probably would have had to bring him to the ED for a non ED issue, take up resources for something that should have been done when we left the office.
It just sucked-seeing my child in such obvious distress. It gets that mom blood pumping and you’ve GOT to fix it.
I know this is long and drawn out, but I’m still mad that he was mishandled like this. He’s never had any sort of rx in his life, so it’s not like they had to CYA. I get there’s an opiate problem, but it’s also a problem when you can’t be properly prescribed anything for legitimate, post op pain control.
Sigh.
Bringing him some sherbet now 😉😁
Thanks for reading.
Talk soon, Lovelies
Allie
