Hospital Visits
However, I dislike going to the hospital not only because of the falling ill part but also because of the long waiting times and tons of other ill people.
Nevertheless, nothing can top the number one reason I hate going to the hospital. The number one reason I hate hospitals is that I did not have the best experience with hospitals as a child and that experience just stuck with me for the rest of the time.
It is not even as if I am traumatised by hospitals or anything since all in all I can’t remember what happened at all. However, I just don’t understand what I don’t like.
Hospitals are supposed to be places where people who need help receive it. A place where the sick get healthy again. A place where life starts and sadly also ends. Hospitals aren’t places where it is something to be scared of. Yet you can never get me into one voluntarily.
Frankly, people who know me know that as well. Yet it still seems incredibly cruel of me not to visit if something does happen. However, I can´t argue for me going to the hospital because once I am there, I am cold and distant which is unhelpful as well. But that is completely beside the point.
For this article, I thought I would try to revisit my memories of hospitals and come to understand why I dislike hospitals and would never want to set foot in a hospital even for a loved one. So it is best to start where it all began.
Like many children around the world, I was born in a hospital but I believe that is too far back in time. The first true encounter I had with the hospitals is actually seven years after my very first encounter.
As a child, I always have been very clumsy. Not as if my clumsiness is gone after going into adulthood or some version of it but as a child, I was more reckless and clumsy than I am now. Growing up does have some perks, I guess.
Besides regular check-ups, I never had to visit any doctors because I was surprisingly healthy even now. Therefore the times I had to visit doctors is because I forked up greatly. This also means I was in great pain and was bleeding out uncontrollably.
The first time this incident happened was when I was roughly four, I guess when I hit my head or something which ended up needing stitching. However, that was not at a hospital. Turns out the doctor's office was enough for that minor incident. One would even think I have learnt my lesson and will be more careful.
Nevertheless, that couldn’t have been more wrong. Telling a child to be careful is just useless because children just want to have fun and frankly fun for children rarely goes together with safety.
The day it happened was just like any other day. Nothing seemed truly different from any other. It was a sunny day and I was in Kindergarten with my peers.
During playtime, we were playing like we always do. Running around on the playground and just having fun being children. Little did I know that something bad was going to happen that day. No one did. No one could anticipate it.
Just like that, it happened. In a blink of an eye, I tripped. Fell… hard. Let´s just say that playground was not very safe for children in the first place, since I tripped over a wooden board on the ground which supported the whole playground facility and fell face-first into pebbles and dirt.
For that reason, the school probably redesigned the whole playground. The floor was padded and everything on the playground was made from plastic. If I had to choose, I would still find the wooden playground where I tripped and ended up in the hospital more fun because the plastic in my opinion is just overkill and sadly not as fun.
Besides the dirty clothes I had, I also managed to slit open some part of my lip and my chin. All I can remember was how blood was dripping everywhere over my clothes and the playground floor and I was crying.
The supervising kindergarten teacher immediately took me to wash up while the other one held off the other curious children. Tears were streaming down my face just like how blood was dripping down my chin.
Luckily, I was not afraid of blood but seeing how much blood dripped out did make me feel faint to a certain extent. As the teacher and I walked down the pathway to the restroom all I can see was a trail of blood and a bloody pullover.
When we got to the restroom and the teacher started helping wash out my wound, all I can see through my tear-filled eyes was blood. Dripping down the drain. It was an interesting sight for certain since I believe I had never seen so much blood before in my life.
After the kindergarten teacher managed to stop the bleeding best to her abilities, she took me to see the school nurse. The school nurse disinfected the wound, which hurt like bloody hell and did patch things up a little.
Nevertheless, since the school nurse could only do so much, she decided to take me to the hospital. As the kindergarten teacher left me in the capable hands of the school nurse and as we were waiting for the taxi to arrive, I just sat there and wondered what happened and what was going to happen.
I looked around and it felt like the nurse´s office became darker and smaller with every passing moment. My favourite hoodie was now completely drained in blood and the caricatures on the hoodie were hardly recognizable. It was safe to say that my favourite hoodie at the time was ruined even though it was already wine red.
Honestly, I can´t remember how I got to the hospital. All I can remember is how my parents were both at work and could not take me home. Out of all the things, the fact that my parents could not be there probably made me cry the most.
When the nurse and I first arrived at the hospital, the doctors used much stronger disinfectant to clean out the wound and I can´t say I didn´t scream because I did, and it hurts so much even though the nurses at the hospital warned me about it and tried to be real careful.
Frankly, I have no idea how much time passed but eventually, my grandparents made it to the hospital and let the school nurse go back to the school. They immediately took me to another hospital, which had better facilities and where my grandmother knew some doctors.
The first thing they did at the other more familiar hospital was to disinfect the wound, no matter how much I insist that it was unnecessary. It felt much milder in comparison to the first two times but it still hurt bloody much.
Then after an unknown amount of waiting the nurses transferred me into a patient bed and let me rest for a bit after the hectic morning I had. Since my memories are a bit fuzzy, I am not sure if my mother came before I head into the operation or after but I remember that she came before the operation.
The doctors put me on anaesthetics for the operation. One of the doctors even asked me to count to ten since at that time I did not know about anaesthetics nor the fact that they put me under anaesthetics, I took it as a challenge and started counting with confidence.
I was out cold after I got to seven. The last sight I remember before I fell into the most peaceful slumber I had was doctors with surgical masks surrounding me.
Again, I have no recollection of how much time has passed but I woke up to the same sight, I fell asleep to. But instead of my grandmother sitting in the corner watching, my mother was there instead.
That was pretty much it. I was told I had ten stitches and was allowed to go home afterwards. I did have to return to have the stitches removed a few weeks later but that was the only reason I ever went to the hospital for a major reason.
The other times it was only something minor that the doctors in the doctor’s office could handle. I cannot say that I like going to the doctors for operations because I hate it and very much to my dismay, I have to go quite frequently for small mishaps. Every time I had to go, I was petrified, and the nurses could confirm that fact. Even thinking about it makes me queasy and sick to my stomach.
It is not even that I am scared of operations in general because I do find them quite interesting but the operations performed on me just scare the living light out of me even though most of the time I won´t remember anything or won´t feel anything.
However, none of this explains why I hate going to the hospital. I hate being operated on but most of the time when I go to the hospital I am not the one on the operation table. For the average person operations do not take place frequently, so why do I hate hospital visits?
Hate to sound like a gen z (which I am) who has a limited repertoire of vocabulary (which I do), I just hate the vibe in the hospital. Every time I step foot into a hospital, I am hit by a sickly atmosphere and am greeted by weakened patients everywhere.
It is the white halls, white rooms, and white everything. It is the bland foods, bland uniforms, and bland decorations. It is just the feeling there. It doesn’t have to be because I am scared to go to hospitals but every time I go to hospitals, there is just an eery feeling waiting for me and I very much hate it.
To a certain extent, I just feel as if gloom and death sweep the halls of a hospital and that feeling is unpleasant to the degree to which I would do anything to avoid it even though that feeling is most of the time not even true.
That gloomy feeling doesn’t even have any evidence or experience to back it up since I have only been to the hospital a few times over the course of my life and I never had to visit when I knew death truly swept the halls of the hospitals, it is all from hearsay.
Therefore, I don’t understand why I hate going to the hospital because current feelings are based on nothing but something I heard somewhen and something I read somewhere. It just seems irrational to avoid someplace that is supposed to do so much good based on a feeling.
Maybe one day I will be able to shake the feeling. Maybe I won´t. Maybe one day I will base my feelings on true experience even though I hope I won’t have to. Maybe the hospital will change its interior design to make it seem less bland and white and more colourful and lively.