"Terrible Experience"

My daughter was in for day surgery to have a wisdom tooth extracted. 

From the very beginning, it felt as though we were put in a room and forgotten about for large parts of the day. We weren’t notified about what was happening or kept informed about when she would be going down. 

When she was taken to surgery, it was upsetting but that’s to be expected. Afterwards, she was struggling to breathe. Each breath was a big gasp. The surgeon didn’t seem overly concerned which was good to hear but they did say they would be back to check her in ten minutes but they didn’t. 

The aftercare seemed non existent. My daughter was given about ten minutes in the bed before she was told to get to the chair. My daughter was barely able to stand and so pretty much collapsed into the chair. 

After that, she was incredibly dizzy and the nurse said it was normal before heading off. The nurse returned later with a glass of water which my daughter was barely able to drink. The dizziness didn’t stop, but this was put down to a lack of food. Given my daughter had been nil by mouth for about ten hours, that was no surprise. She was brought apple juice and at that point, even though the nurse knew she was incredibly dizzy and hadn’t walked anywhere, we were told that she could go home after she had finished the juice. This would have been just before 6pm which was about 45 minutes since coming out of recovery. 

It felt as though we were rushed out of the door before she should have been because the hospital was closing for the day and everyone wanted to go home. The lights had been turned off, the staff had their coats on and the front door was locked. It felt like we were hounded out at the end of the day with no regard to my daughter’s wellbeing. They didn’t even give us the pain relief medication we were told we would have. 

She was most definitely not ready to be discharged, of the many things that we were told that they would check to make sure she could do, none of them were checked. 

Information we were given about her recovery seems far from accurate. The nurse said she had not had stitches, yet today some stitches have started to come out from the wound. Advice on what she can eat and when seems to be wrong. 

The whole experience was disgraceful.