Clare and Chloe

Hospital/ Department visited: Botox/Nurology RHC

Experiences:
When getting botox under sedation you will go to the day ward where you will be given a bed in a room with other patients.

A nurse will take your details & your child’s observations then the consultant on duty that day will come round and talk you through the procedure. They will also apply some numbing cream to the area where the botox will be administered. A nurse will then bring the sedation (midazolam) which if given orally will not taste nice for your child unfortunately but if they have a gastrostomy tube it can be given via it.

Quite soon after your child will become very subdued and possibly even fall asleep. A nurse will also check obs again to make sure they are not having any breathing difficulties with the midazolam.

You will then accompany your child into a side room where there will be other members of staff and the neurologist you met earlier. They will use an ultrasound to make sure they inject the botox into the correct muscle. Sometimes they may need to retry before administering if they haven’t hit the right spot but this doesn’t happen often. Your child may feel a slight discomfort but most likely the sedation will prevent any upset. The administering of the botox will only take a minute or two per injection & is over quickly.

Afterwards your child will be expected to eat and drink or have a tube feed & be alert before you are then allowed to go home. We are usually in the hospital for around 4 hours for this procedure.

While the thought of sedating your child is not a nice one, it will make the process a lot easier on them (and you). Botox can be done without sedation in which case it’s a very quick in and out process. Your physio will most likely have talked you through the decision to sedate or not previously.

Chloe is a very highly strung, cognitively delayed child some some medical PTSD and it was overall a fairly easy procedure for her to manage due to the sedation.