AND it Freshens you breath!

Yesterday, I was in the OR , which we sometimes do for kids who have a ton of work to do, or are unable to cooperate. Our first patient was a 9 year old girl, which is odd because we usually only see kids under 6. But she did have an "anxiety disorder" according to Grandma (although there was nothing on her H&P from her doctor). I always call the patients the night before to go over things, and most especially to remind them not to eat or drink anything for 8 hours prior.

Grandma asks me, "Are you going to give her anything while she's waiting? The only reason I ask, is that she is so anxious, I just wondered if I could give her an Ibuprofen to help her calm down."

"Umm...no I would just let the anesthesiologist make the call," I say, choosing not to point out that Ibuprofen would do nothing for anxiety. "I can't gurantee it, but if they feel it will help they can give her something."

We then had a 5 minute conversation about how important it is not to eat or drink, and that it is for her safety, and if she does, we will cancel the procedure. Grandma understood, and thanked me for the call.

So in the morning, when I show up, the nurses tell me that grandma had given her something to calm down! When I asked her about it, she says, "She was just so anxious! I HAD TO DO SOMETHING! So I gave her a tic tac, and she is ok now."

"Uh...a tic tac? How long ago?"

"About an hour. Will that be a problem?"

I was really at a loss, Trying not to laugh, as I hear the nurses snickering over at their desk. You would think, that if they were aware, they would say something like, 'we know it doesn't do anything, but she thinks it does', but they just said it so matter of factly, like I should say, "Oh yes, those are wonderful, I use them on all my anxious patients!" So I am trying come up with a way to tell them tic tacs aren't medicine, even though they look like little pills, but choose instead, to bail out, and let the anesthesiologist decide if we can go forward.

We ended up going on. And by the way, Tic Tacs do NOT make her more calm. However, the propofol and sevoflurane did wonders.