I’m Not Afraid of Dying, But I’m Terrified of Hospitals

I didn’t realize how scared I’d be until 10 minutes before surgery

Illustration by Christopher Robin — Used with Permission

Yesterday I had minor surgery. I was under anesthesia for about an hour and able to eat and walk without much pain soon after being moved from recovery back to the ambulatory surgery wing.

I was discharged exactly three hours from the time they wheeled me into the OR and home (with a Boston cream donut and frozen mocha in hand) before noon. And now, as I reflect back on the experience a full day later, I’m beginning to realize how scared I was.

For the entire week leading up to the day of my surgery, I kept thinking I might not wake up or there would be some kind of life-changing complication that would make me forever regret having the procedure in the first place.

I had a hysteroscopic D&C which was primarily diagnostic. I assume it’s pretty routine. I told a few of my friends that I was getting it and they had all had one done. I told my sister who is a respiratory therapist and works at a busy hospital in Florida. “You’ll be fine,” she said. That was comforting, but I was still terrified.

Mortality is a part of life and I like to think I’m chill about the whole dying thing. I tell myself that I’m not scared of death because I sat so closely with it when my daughter was dying from cancer. But death, in the abstract, is one thing. Standing naked behind a curtain in an ambulatory surgery wing and rubbing yourself down with antimicrobial wipes prior to being wheeled into an OR is quite another.

I may not be afraid of death, but it turns out that I am afraid of hospitals and what they mean. Hospitals will always represent huge turning points for me. Once upon a time, these turning points were wonderful. Two decades ago, I left the very same hospital where I had yesterday’s procedure, with my youngest daughter snuggled in her car seat beside her three-year-old sister. Back then, hospitals meant new life. They meant family. I was young and healthy and my babies were healthy too.

But since then, hospitals have become places of despair. It was a CT scan at our local hospital that revealed my daughter’s cancer. I thought the pain in her distended belly was appendicitis, but…