So I avoid them as much as I could.
A good friend almost died in an accident and I didn't go see him. I wanted to. I hoped he was ok. I checked in with other friends to see if he was improving. I couldn't visit him. I felt like a bad friend.
My grandfather was hospitalized for two weeks two minutes from where I worked. I could've easily have taken a few lunch breaks to break the monotony of hospital sounds. But I didn't. I wanted him to be ok. I checked with my dad almost everyday on his improvement. I couldn't go there. I was scared. When he got home, I went to see him. He asked me why I didn't visit. I felt like a bad grandson.
One time, I had to go to the hospital for blood tests. As I sat in the hardened, loveless chairs, I surveyed my surroundings. The other blood test participants all looked sick and deathly. The walls were peeling and needed a new coat of pain. The floors were well cleaned but felt dirty. The conversations were all about "so and so" is dying, or "so and so" is sick. Every moment I had to wait made me sicker. Too much time here and anyone would be sick, I thought. I felt a weight on my shoulders pushing my torso closer to the ground. I sensed my stomach turning over. My brain fogged. My heart beat faster. I felt sick.
Hospitals made the healthy person, in me, sick!
My baby girl got sick when she was 5 weeks old. She had a seizure. Being adopted, and no family medical history, we didn't know what the hell was going on. She spent a week in the hospital with my wife by her side as the doctors performed all the necessary tests. I spent more time in the hospital that week than I had ever done in my life. My baby girl needed me and I didn't want to let her down in the first test of dad-hood.
I think that experience rid my fear of hospitals. Spending a week, sleeping on a lazy boy chair, was like entering the dark cave of a lion's den. I wasn't going to leave my baby alone. I wanted to protect her from the morbid evils of that sterilized place. My provider instincts overlept my fears.
Recently, my mother got ill and had to spend two weeks in the death chambers. With the fear gone, I was there almost everyday. I didn't know the fear was gone. I just felt the right thing to do was to be close to my mother.
Not thinking about my loathing of hospitals, a wise old friend challenged me by asking where the fear came from. "Oh, I don't know", I responded unthinkingly.
The answer came five ticks later as it slammed into me head-on like a transport truck.
When I was young, younger than I can remember, I was hospitalized for an infection in my lymph nodes. After being rushed to the hospital, in an hallucinogenic state, the doctor would not allow my parents to be with me.
I was alone. A scared little toddler, away from his life givers, given to strangers as he fought for his life on the surgical table.
My mom thinks that event detached me from her. She said I was different when I came home. Not remembering any of this, I can only suppose what psychological effect it may have had on me.
That event erased from my memory but engraved in my psyche developed a fear and loathing of hospitals that was only cured by my own child being put into a similar situation.
Where do your fears come from? They can be cured but they need to be faced head on.
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