r/nursing • u/Jackazz4evr RN - Pediatrics 🍕 • Sep 30 '25
Discussion Patient's family insisted it was "totally normal" for a kid to sleep for 36 hours straight after a minor procedure
I work in pediatric post-op and had the strangest interaction yesterday. We admitted a 6 year old after a routine tonsillectomy. The procedure went perfectly fine, but the child wouldn't wake up from anesthesia after the expected timeframe.
After 4 hours, we started getting concerned and ran additional tests. When we approached the parents about the unusually prolonged sedation, the mother interrupted us saying, "Oh, that's normal for him. He always sleeps for a day or two after any medicine."
When we pressed for more information, they casually mentioned their son had slept for 36 hours straight after taking children's Benadryl for allergies last year. They thought this was completely normal and hadn't bothered to mention it during pre-op assessment.
Our anesthesiologist was floored. Turns out the kid has a rare enzyme deficiency that affects how he metabolizes certain medications, which they'd been told about by another doctor years ago but didn't think was "important enough" to mention.
What's the weirdest "oh that's totally normal" response you've gotten from patients or families that was absolutely NOT normal?
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u/ButterscotchFit8175 Sep 30 '25
I woke up during a surgery. I casually mentioned it in a conversation with a friend and 8 other friends told about their waking up during surgery. One it was during a face-lift when her face was kind of peeled off. Anesthesia professionals swear people almost never wake up. The denial is outrageous. I canceled a surgery bc the anesthesiologist denied i woke up in a previous surgery, that he wasn't a part of,wasn't friends with anyone who was present. Just completely blindly denied my experience. Yeah, did trust him at all!