Medical response to an autistic persons pain

I have recently been suffering dental problems. Because I have difficulty with waiting rooms and medical facilities in general, I was attempting self treatment untill the pain exceeded my pain tolerance threshold. I took every pain pill I could find to no effect. This happened in the early hours of the morning shortly before the new year. I was alternating between running up and down my flat punching walls and siting on the floor crying. I walked five miles across the city to A+E to seek help. Before I could enter the hospital, I struggled for maybe twenty minutes to achieve a calm demeanour. I waited there for three hours and all the help I recieved was a Ibuprofen which I had already taken to a near overdose and found ineffective. I believe I had a genuine clinical need for serious pain relief, but was unable to persuade the staff to take the severity of the pain seriously or to elict empathy for said pain and as a result recieved profoundly insufficient treatment.

Has anyone else had a similar experience?

Are there in existence or planning guidelines for accurately assessing an Autistic persons pain?

Parents
  • I lost a lot of teeth through abcesses, often after air travel with work before Christmas - it related to sinus problems. So this became a common occurrence - being stuck in the situation with no dentists open until after the holiday.

    Yes there are on call services but it is a postcode lottery. Where I was living at the time the services were a total joke. On one occasion I took a taxi to the other side of town to an emergency dentist who just anaesthetised me (not very well) and took out three teeth - the tooth with the abcess, and the ones either side. He was truly horrible to me and mocked my distress. My regular dentist called his actions barbaric and unnecessary. Apparently the emergency dentist that night was well known for his attitude problem.

    I too suffered on these occasions like outraged described. Nothing seemed to address the pain. I just spent days (and nights) in constant agony with no relief.

    I think the other respondents are forgetting something - autism and sensory perception - hyper versus hypo sensitivity etc. Toothache might well be unduly severe for some people on the spectrum. Responses to pain medication vary for people with autism.

    I am a bit surprised therefore by some of the other responses.....

Reply
  • I lost a lot of teeth through abcesses, often after air travel with work before Christmas - it related to sinus problems. So this became a common occurrence - being stuck in the situation with no dentists open until after the holiday.

    Yes there are on call services but it is a postcode lottery. Where I was living at the time the services were a total joke. On one occasion I took a taxi to the other side of town to an emergency dentist who just anaesthetised me (not very well) and took out three teeth - the tooth with the abcess, and the ones either side. He was truly horrible to me and mocked my distress. My regular dentist called his actions barbaric and unnecessary. Apparently the emergency dentist that night was well known for his attitude problem.

    I too suffered on these occasions like outraged described. Nothing seemed to address the pain. I just spent days (and nights) in constant agony with no relief.

    I think the other respondents are forgetting something - autism and sensory perception - hyper versus hypo sensitivity etc. Toothache might well be unduly severe for some people on the spectrum. Responses to pain medication vary for people with autism.

    I am a bit surprised therefore by some of the other responses.....

Children
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