Tonsillectomy

When I was eight years old, I had my tonsils taken out. My dad stayed home with my sister while my mother and I went to the hospital to take care of business. I didn't really know what I was in for, but I knew it was relatively serious, much more than anything I'd been through before. I'd had scarlet fever, chicken pox, and many, many ear infections, but it was the ear infections -horrid, painful ordeals that sent us to the emergency room in the middle of more than a few nights - that finally prompted the doctor to insist upon the removal of my tonsils.

It was in the early fall of 1972 that my mom and I arrived at the hospital. I would be staying overnight and the nurses took me around to the other rooms so I could meet the other kids on the floor, quite different from today's climate of drive-by surgeries and HIPAA. I had a good time playing with the other children in the playroom room down the hall, but I was unhappy about the bed situation in my room: there were two beds, and one of them - mine - was like a large crib, with bars all the way around. It was a big baby bed, but my complaints did nothing to change anyone's mind. I was stuck with it.

The next morning, the surgeon came in to explain what was going to happen. It was then that I became afraid and tried to convince everyone that this was a bad idea, that I didn't care to go to sleep and have someone operate on my throat. But like the bed, I had no say in the matter. A nurse gave me a shot, and the next thing I did was wake up in my "crib," calling out for my mother with a very sore throat.

When I went back to sleep that night, I was cozy in spite of the pain. And then something happened that continues to touch me to this day. When my mother thought I was asleep, she kissed me good night. This was special, because my mother was not an affectionate woman. I'd secretly glimpsed a part of her that remained hidden from me, and as young as I was at the time, her act made me cry.