“What are you ‘dying’ of this time, Lauren?”
This is the greeting I am met with every time I set foot into my pediatrician’s office, which is much too often. If there were a rewards card for office visits, I would be a gold member. With every strange bump, slight cough, or nagging headache I get, I can only put my mind to rest by dragging my mother across town to get whatever is bothering me checked out.
I am a hypochondriac by its very definition.
I have been afraid of everything pertaining to the medical field ever since the sight of a bloody scraped knee acquired on the third grade playground sent me into a collapse and convulsions. After an emergency room visit and what felt like hundreds of tests later, the doctors concluded that I was fine and that I had fainted simply out of fear. However, my eight-year-old self knew without any years of medical school education that there was actually something terribly wrong with me and I would be on my deathbed before elementary graduation.
Throughout my childhood, the thought of everything from catching a disease to surgery made me feel nauseous. While most kids feared not finding a date to the middle school dance, I feared that a mosquito bite on my leg would lead me to be at death’s door due to West Nile Virus within a week. I feared my life being cut short before I could even live it due to some freak disorder or disease and I feared the state of eternal oblivion I would one day enter. A simple scraped knee led me to become incapacitated by the concept of sickness and essentially death. Despite all this, I still signed up for the medical career pathway all students at my high school typically take.
I managed to stomach my way through the first two years of textbook work and medical terminology memorization. However, I dreaded every second leading up to my junior year when I would have to perform clinical rotations around my local hospital. I viewed the hospital as the absolute embodiment of my hypochondriac-driven fears. I could not imagine myself thrust into the hospital environment once a week when I could not watch hospital shows on television without becoming anxious.
However, within the fluorescent halls of Valley Baptist Medical Center during my junior year, I learned the very definition of overcoming fear. Even though I was shaking in my scrubs, I was a spectator to everything from feeding tube installation to gastric surgery. I pushed thoughts of demise to the back of my mind, and pushed what little bravery I had to the front. My ears heard screams due to death and grief amongst the beeps of ICU machines, but also heard the cries of joy and new beginnings in the women’s pavilion. I saw death in the eyes of several patients but I was also witness to recovery and new life. By the end of the year, I no longer dreaded my visits to the hospital but looked forward to what I would be exposed to.
I still become nervous every time I begin to feel the familiar tickle of a sore throat form behind my tongue, but I do not live a life paralyzed by the fear of something unavoidable. I will not spend my life being afraid of when the end of it will come, and I like to consider myself oblivious to the oblivion which will one day overcome me. I no longer view death and disease with the same fear I acquired from my “life-threatening” third grade incident. I view death and disease as old friends who will inevitably come knocking at my body’s door someday, met with a warm embrace. Until then, I will keep bothering my doctor to make sure my friends stay away as long as they possibly can.
