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My Childhood Tonsillectomy
Memories of my first hospital stay
I have it in my mind that it was a Thursday morning. I was six-years-old and my little suitcase was packed and ready. I was going into hospital to have my tonsils out.
At school there was often someone absent through tonsillitis, and I remember having it myself. The default, and permanent remedy back then was to whip the tonsils out with a simple operation. My own anatomical knowledge of what I was about to go through came via the many comics I had read. When a character roared in anger or laughed out loud, the cartoonist would sometimes draw the uvula, hanging at the back of the cavernous mouth. This is what I thought I was going to have removed.
The indifference I showed towards my forthcoming operation may have given observers the impression of a brave little soldier, but my two brothers were instrumental in assuaging any anxiety I felt about what was to come; the younger because he was coming in with me, even though he was a mere infant, and the older because he had come out unscathed from the same operation a year earlier.
I Leave for the Hospital
The arrival of the ambulance, a cream-coloured monster with dark blue windows, drew several neighbours from their houses, and I felt very important when I carried my suitcase…
