Best of luck. Yes, caregivers sometimes seem to miss the point entirely.
I refrained from posting to this thread because my story wouldn’t help in the lead-up to the procedure. My 2 1/2-year-old son was experiencing sleep apnea, so his doctor recommended tonsils and adenoids come out.
We got him to the surgery center and they had me bring him in for prep. When he was ready, they handed me the gasmask to start him on anesthetics and said “you do this.” This was my first child, it sounded like new-thinking, involve the parents, etc., so I just kinda went along. I took the mask and put it over my son’s mouth and nose while talking with him about the process in a gentle voice.
The look on his face of “but…but…you’re my Dad” fear and betrayal is something I will never forget. I walked out in a daze. After the brief procedure it took a couple of hours for him to wake up. He was horse, but the first words out of his mouth were “Does Daddy still like me?” I cried and laughed and we worked it through.
I have a wonderful relationship with him (applying to colleges now!) and we can laugh about the story, but for a while there I thought that if I ever saw that nurse again I would fit a mask over her mouth and nose and cinch it down tight.
Awwwwwww - my heart is breaking. Poor kiddo (and poor Daddy!!).
When my son needed surgery (badly broken arm) they did not have me do anything so wild as giving him the mask - but I was with him in pre-op until they wheeled him away and he started getting hugely agitated despite the extra dose of sedative they’d given him. Of course he’d been there all bloody day (his surgery got bumped due to a more dire emergency) - at that point it was something like 4:30 in the afternoon and he’d had the most awful day of his life. I was just thankful they let him keep his favorite stuffed animals with him as they wheeled him off.
Kambuckta, your grandson refusing meds seems pretty typical and it’s incredibly frustrating. When Dweezil the doc wanted him to spend the night in the hospital afterward. He refused any oral meds - so was in a huge amount of pain. Pinning him wouldn’t work as of course that would have risked injuring the arm.
When we got him home we were able to give him the meds in juice (something he didn’t get a lot of) for a few doses until he wised up to that. Ugh.
(and poor Daddy!!).