Hospital Horrors

When I was little, hospitals were a terrifying place. I'd like to blame my first early impression on the book, Madeline, where the heroine gets appendicitis and has to get it removed. Sure, Curious George Goes to the Hospital presented a scary scenario as well, but I specifically had fears of having a bum appendix whenever I had a stomach ache, and I debated whether it would really be all that bad if I let it explode just so that I wouldn't have to go to the hospital for surgery (not that I ever had appendicitis, but that was the only hospital-worthy medical problem that was even remotely looming/threatening in my young mind).

The second early impression was when I was in elementary school and I went with my mother to the hospital to pick up some stuff for her work. We passed by a dark room that had the door slightly ajar; I peered in as we walked by, and the light from the hall gave a hint of a huge apparatus that practically filled the entire space. It left such a strong impression on me that that image is still burned into my mind today. Shortly after I saw it, I had nightmares about it, and I dreaded going back to the hospital for fear of having to even look at the stuff. Who knew what kind of unspeakable, scary things medical machinery could do to you! I was sure bodies would be hooked up to their menacing, gleaning arms, and they would just suck the life force from your helpless, tortured frame until there was nothing left or until you were transformed into a horrible monster! If I had the opportunity to actually see the machines in action, to understand how they worked and why they were so big, I'm sure the fear would have been mostly dissolved (I think that first traumatizing machine doled out good ol', harmless x-rays). Unfortunately, I remained a coward for many more years, my imagination running wild with a combination of fear of the dark plus fear of the unknown.

Now, many hospital trips later, these institutions are a-okay in my book. Machines are classified in my mind as being mostly harmless. Having always been on the visiting side of things has certainly helped too- by now, being hospitalized is such a distant threat on my radar of potentially horrible situations that it is behind losing my left hand while driving with my arm out the window or waking up with a spider on my face.