So…What’s Your Childhood Trauma?

“Life is pain…Anyone who says differently is selling something.” -The Princess Bride

Hi, again.

In my film-writing class at UVic, we watched the pilot to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I remember watching the show a couple of times as a kid (not the finest hour of my older siblings), and being a bit scared. What I remember creeping me out the most was a part where she is reading people’s minds and hearing everyone’s thoughts. It was just creepy to me to hear so many voices and be inside the minds of so many people. Ironic that getting inside people’s heads seems to be something fundamental about being human, and functioning in today’s world (of course to a point—boundaries are good).

In that first episode there are a number of stereotypical nineties insults and teen one-liners. It was amusing to me to learn that Joss Whedon didn’t want the show to become dated, so rather than using what the kids of the day were saying, he came up with his own slang, and ironically much of that worked its way into popular language that still exists today (I found a post on Blog Encounters that talks about this phenomenon in more detail).

There’s a part in the episode where a girl is jumped  by a villain and she blurts out, “Whoa, what’s your childhood trauma?” It’s quite a hilarious moment, but the phrase rings very different in our day, where mental health, counselling and childhood trauma seem to be buzz words. 

As I often explain to those of older generations who get eerie about how open many of the youth are today about their personal challenges, “No, you see, having mental health issues is not as bad as it used to be. It’s okay to talk about it, now. Being vulnerable is actually hip.” 

So asking someone’s childhood trauma sounds less of an insult and—if not inappropriately triggering—it almost feels like a first date topic for youth, today. However, I am told the tactic of what Brene Brown warns against as “forcing vulnerability” would not have worked on my new wife, when we started dating, so I’m glad my tactics were more subtle. Meh. To each their own.

I like what Jordan Peterson says about life, pain, happiness and meaning. In his book 12 Rules for Life (life changing), I get the message that life is not about finding happiness, per se, but it is about finding meaning in suffering. He has said, if there is one thing all humans can agree on it is that life is full of suffering. There’s a YouTube video that explains this idea pretty well: Stop Chasing Happiness (pursue meaning instead).

I don’t want to say too much about the following story, because other than the name, it’s pretty much 100% my own personal experience. 

I have a heart for doctors and healthcare professionals, and a heart for those who have all but lost hope for a solution to their problems. I’ve been on both sides. I have experienced the frustration of an unknown ailment and the peace and validation of a diagnosis, and treatment. I’ve lived the liberation of a miraculous healing of which doctors have both played a role, and have been astounded at. I’ve looked back, as an adult and been grateful for the ride.

K, I don’t want to say anymore, cuz you’ll get it in the story (originally published in The Pensive)…

The Doctor Will See You Now

By Elias Orrego

The child slid his hand gently along the surface of the porous red rocks, letting his palm get a scratch and a tickle. He picked up a couple and tapped them together; it gave off the same faint echo that could be heard underwater in a public pool. It blended into the silence of the waiting room and the tide-like hum of the cars driving by, on the street outside.

He wiped the red silt from his hands onto his shorts, and then onto the almost fake plant that grew out of the rocks by his side. So many offices had those plants, and he always had to touch them to see if they were real or fake. Sometimes he still couldn’t tell.

His mother had read the books on the shelf before. There weren't any new ones. Sliding off the stretched upholstery on the cold metal chair sounded as if he was passing gas, and the five-year-old laughed to himself. Then, he rested his hands on the cushion of the chair, and felt the air seep back in. 

His mother flashed a smile, and made eye-contact over the top of her reading glasses, for a moment, before returning to Reader’s Digest.

The lady at the desk was answering phone calls and sifting through papers. Looking up over the counter, the boy could make out graying hairs in her part. “Mhmm, let me see if that time works…” More paper shuffling. More talking. Another call. He looked at the toy table, longingly. “Yup, we have your records,” the woman behind the counter said again. He play-stomped over to the toys. There were no other kids in, that day.

“Albert? The doctor will see you now,” a calm, pleasant voice called out, looking up from a clipboard. His mother plopped the paperback down and slipped her reading glasses into her purse. Albert stopped playing with the three-dimensional abacus, as his imaginary roller-coaster, and followed the directions of the nice lady’s hand gestures. 

It was a dimly lit room, this time, and they sat in the silence and waited while staring at metal instruments and posters of organs and bones.

A gray-haired, white-coated man came in with a clip-board and a warm smile. He asked a few questions and wrote some things down. Then he had a “chat with Mom” while Albert listened to his heart through the stethoscope.

Nothing new.

The next day Albert would tap the red stones in another office. The next week, another. They all had those 3D abacus toys, and he played with the shapes, and made sounds of the people going around and around, back and forth on a roller coaster. More questions, more tests. A big metal tube like a space-ship to lie down in.

“You’re brave.”

“You’re a good boy.”

“You’re so patient.”

It seemed Albert missed more days of school in a week than he went. He liked kindergarten class, but he didn’t complain about skipping a day, especially when Mrs. Hunt was replaced by Ms. Freeman, and she told him off for talking, or leaning back in his chair, or “taking too long”. Did he feel well enough, today? He would ask himself, because he knew his mother would ask. His tummy was sore. He had appointments to go to.

But being in the doctor’s office and hospital made Albert feel special, like he did when he broke his leg, and lay in traction for six weeks. It was worth learning how to walk again, to be told he was brave, to be smiled at by nurses—pushed around on wheels. Visited by family and people who cared. 

“The doctor will see you now…”

His leg had been fine for months. There were no back problems or pain. He was a miracle child. But, this stomach stuff—that was a mystery.

“It’s been months of these tests,” said the doctor. It was the family doctor, this time (another follow-up visit), “and I’m going to refer you to…”

Six months wait. The top doctor for stomachs in all the Pacific was right there in Sydney, all along. He would see what the problem was. He would find a solution.

There was light coming into his office. Albert sat with both parents, across from the specialist’s desk. It was different, this visit, this doctor—he was sure. He spoke calmly and surely. “Tell me about the accident.”

Albert’s father recounted the story that was ever-clear in Albert’s mind. “He was pinned under the fallen brick wall.” He broke his femur and pelvis. It was a “compound fracture”.

Albert remembered the pushing down of the hard, cold wall. His twelve-year-old sister and her friends, unable to budge it. His mother came running from the house. There was screaming and crying and praying. Albert shed a tear, and his body tensed all over, unable to move or even feel where everything was, under the crushing. The four girls, his mother, and an old man who happened to be walking by, were able to lift it just a few inches. Albert army-crawled out, and the wall hit the ground.

“It was a miracle,” the doctor confirmed, “that the back was ok, he can walk.” Albert knew that.   

Then the doctor said something different, something the family had never heard reasoned, “I believe that the impact of the brick wall crushed part of the small intestine. It has scarred over, but it has healed improperly, and that is the cause of the episodes.”

There were a couple of tests they could do very simply, that would confirm what he thought. The procedure was simple. If the theory was confirmed, they could get into surgery right away. 

All those nights on the floor… The constant dull pain, and the frequent sharp pain, every couple of days. It was given a reason. A fixable reason. A reasonable fix. 

All that burning of the throat, the gums, the teeth. 

All that feeling that the food was better on the floor than inside of a tummy at war with itself. All of that no longer needed to be Albert’s norm. That bad part of his body, that didn’t heal right. It could be taken out. Removed. It didn’t have to bother him anymore. Everything was going to get better, from here on out.

A week later, the tests were confirmed, and Albert lay on his bed, in his gown, with his parents nearby and the nurses looking over.

“The doctor will see you now…”