Cardiac Ward Friends.
You’d expect that I made lots of friends in hospital. Friends with similar problems as I had but that didn’t happen. I did not make one single acquaintance in any hospital pediatric cardiac ward that I’d call a friendship. This only occurred to me very recently. I believe even as a child I didn’t see the point. A hospital stay was so brief and people came from so far and wide that it really wasn’t much point in cultivating friendships. I’m well aware that I’m very introverted and don’t make friends easily but I had an aversion to making friends in hospital. There was another problem with hospital friends, especially in the cardiac ward. Even though the hospital stay was short, sometimes their journey didn’t last long. It was horrifyingly close to home.
I remember one particular boy who I’d become acquainted with and we were getting along rather well. He was in for an operation to fix his heart and honestly I was a little jealous. He was going on to have a normal childhood full of running, jumping and playing without having to stop to catch his breath. His surgery was a success. The next time I saw him after surgery he was a lovely pink colour and doing very well. Days later it was over. Something had gone wrong.
There was something I wanted dearly and that was to be normal. If I couldn’t do that, to be perceived as normal by my piers would be second best. Unfortunately if I had friends with heart abnormalities, I felt I’d be found out. Childhood can be cruel like that. If you associate with kids who have heart problems then you’re part of that group. By association I would have been labeled “not normal”. I wanted was to be seen as a perfectly normal child by all the other perfectly normal children. It’s not the best reason but that’s how it was.
That’s why I didn’t make friends in hospital.
What usually happens when you keep a secret?
It comes out.
Part of my parcel was my right ear that jutted out and was a little mis-formed. It looked rather goblin like to be honest. I also only have about 20% hearing ability with it. I am effectively deaf on my right side. Children – my piers – used to make fun of me for only a small problem like my ear so of course I wanted to keep my bigger problem quiet!
Eventually I reached the age when I could have the ear fixed and I looked as normal as any other young boy at school.
Of course the teachers knew of my problem in case of the horrible event of something going wrong. Of course the teachers treated me differently too. Eventually my friends and acquaintances realized this and asked me about it. I confirmed that there was indeed something wrong with me but wouldn’t tell them what. I learned quickly that the best would have been to simply tell them. The speculations of what was wrong were completely off target with one young fellow being absolutely convinced I had asthma. Looking back I think it’s because when I played I breathed so heavily.
I hated telling friends then and I hate telling people now because the moment they know they treat me differently. They either handle me as if I’m about to break or they over compensate in trying to treat me “normally” and become hard. Either way they change, I change or something changes in the dynamic of the relationship.
As a teenager, some of my acquaintances asked me, shortly after finding out I have a heart abnormality, that I surely couldn’t be thinking sexual thoughts in my tender state!
Sadly, they were mistaken and I informed them as much. There was nothing wrong with my hormones or my mind and as far as I knew it was my heart, not anything else that was different.
Ciao for now.