How I Overcame My Fear of Robbers Through Hospital Attendance

My first memorable experience in the hospital was when I was 13. I had an outpatient surgery on my eyelid. It had been bruised when I was born and so for the first 13 years of my life, my left lid drooped slightly lower than my right. This surgery was traumatic for me. After the old doctor with hair in his ears fixed me up, I woke up in the recovery room, caused a lot of trouble for the nurse there, and finally declared to my family that I would never have surgery again.

A couple of years later, my grandfather was in the hospital at Vanderbilt. I went to visit him and when I walked in his hospital room and saw the tube of blood coming out of his neck, I almost passed out. I immediately walked out of the room and laid down on the floor in the hallway.

Then in college, I had a roommate who got her appendix out. I went over when I got off work to sit with her. She was just coming out of the anesthesia when I arrived and was still pretty loopy. And sick. I held the bedpan that she continuously threw up in. Then her hometeachers came in for a visit. When they walked in she yelled out in a British accent, "I'M TOTALLY NUDE!" I held in the laughter and told them it was fine to come in because, in fact, she had on a hospital gown. I did find out later that she was totally nude underneath that gown, when I saw a lot more than I bargained for as I helped her to the restroom. Finally I was relieved by someone else and as I walked out of the hospital room, I started to cry. I called my mom from a payphone in the waiting room. A kind older gentleman saw me crying and brought over a chair for me to sit in and offered me his condolences. Of course, he thought someone must have died with the way I was acting.

Later, however, I did feel pretty good that I had done what needed to be done when it needed to be done, even if I did have a minor breakdown afterwards.

I had always been afraid that when a moment of emergency comes, I would freeze up and not be able to react as I should. This fear stems from two separate experiences. As a child, I had an irrational fear of robbers. (Are you surprised that I would have an irrational fear? ) I felt it was not a matter of if, but when our house would be broken into.

One weekend I was visiting my dad and my sister and I were sleeping on the daybed and trundle in the nursery where my new baby sister was asleep. I woke up in the night and saw two figures moving and whispering outside my window. I knew I needed to do something and I was so convinced that the window screen was being cut that, had there been a phone in the bedroom, I would have called 911. I was so mortified that I couldn't even move. I kept whispering "Jenny" until my sister finally stirred. I told her that someone was breaking into the house. She told me to shut up and then rolled over. It took me about 5 minutes and all the strength I had to push off my comforter and actually fall off of the bed and onto the floor. I slowly crawled to the bedroom door and when I opened it, my dad was standing there. I screamed and then started hyperventilating. He asked me what was wrong and I said men were trying to break in. He quickly ran outside where he found that the wind had blown a chair from the porch up against the window and the flag on the house was making shadows on the window from the streetlight. He had heard me fall off the bed through the baby monitor and had come to see what was going on. My family still gives me a hard time about this by acting scared and saying, "There's a flag outside my window!"

Less than a year later, I woke up one night and was really hot. I decided to go downstairs where it was cooler and sleep in the guest room. I did and was still hot, so I decided to sleep on the floor next to the A/C vent. I laid down and looked up and saw a man pearing in through the bottom 6" of the floor length window where the blinds were not quite pulled all the way down. Again, I froze and didn't move. I just laid there staring, with every muscle in my body all tensed up for who knows how long. The man left quickly and I continued to do nothing. Finally after some time, I was able to get up and wake up my mom.

Basically after these two experiences, I realized that despite Ally McBeal-like daydreams I have of myself chasing someone who might grab my purse and then beating him to the ground Alias-style, I am really a huge wimp who, when confronted with her fears, does nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Now the hospital experience was obviously nothing compared to what a real break-in would be like, but it gave me the confidence to realize that, yes, I can cope with unpleasant situations and do what needs to be done, even if I need to have a small emotional breakdown immediately following it.