The End of the Innocence

Title inspired by Don Henley's song of the same name.

It was early 1992. I was four years old and only child at the time. The Navy had stationed us on a small Japanese island, where the beach was never out of sight and a “long trip” meant two hours. It was a great place to grow up, even though the emotional aspect of growing up may have come too quickly.

It was just a regular day at home. My dad was at work and my mom was tending to my usual antics. Nothing peculiar had happened until noontime when I went to the bathroom and found my underwear soaked in blood. Naturally, being four, I associated blood with dying. In sheer panic, I screamed for my mother. I still remember the shock on her face when she walked in, though she quickly erased it and tried to remain calm so I would stop panicking. When I had finally calmed down, she brought me a new pair of underwear and told me to wear a sanitary napkin in case I bled again. She assured me that everything was going to be okay, and that it was all my running around that had caused this. But I could tell that it wasn’t really okay. This wasn’t normal because my mom wasn’t acting normal. She wasn’t in the living room watching her normal shows. She was in the kitchen making phone call after phone call. I would have gone and eavesdropped like usual, but I was told to sit still and for once, I listened.

The next day, I bled again and was taken to the emergency room at the hospital where my dad worked. He met up with us at the emergency room where we waited for a few minutes before being escorted to the ultrasound room. I remember lying on the bed, watching the screen and waiting for some absurd, but obvious, image of disease to appear. Nothing of that sort happened, but the doctor was able to determine that the development of a cyst on one of my ovaries had caused the abnormal bleeding. The cause of the cyst, however, was a mystery.

Upon this discovery, my parents and I were scheduled to fly to Hawaii, where the medical facilities were better equipped to deal with my situation. Almost every day of those two weeks were spent in the hospital. I’d been through ultrasounds, x-rays, and even had an IV in my arm at one point, which I hope never happens again. It was the worst pain I had ever felt, and even though my parents weren’t being prodded, I could tell they were hurting too.

Sometime close to the end of the two weeks, just as mysteriously as it had appeared, the cyst disappeared, and no one could explain why. As grateful as we were for it to be gone, my parents had a hard time dealing with not knowing how and why it had happened in the first place. Without knowing the answers to those questions, they could never really be sure I was back to normal.

Fast-forward sixteen years to the present and my mom still worries about what happened so long ago. I haven’t had another cyst, but she’s insistent on me having regular examinations and doing whatever I can to prevent another ordeal. She worries that this might somehow prevent me from having kids one day, and to be honest, at this age, I worry about that too.

The experience as a whole was bittersweet. There are times when I feel resentful. No four-year-old should have to face that kind of fear. No child’s innocent perspective on life should be shattered by all the tests, procedures, and medical technology that we adults so often associate with (saving, or even giving) life. Disease yields emotions and realizations that only make one grow up too quickly. But in doing so, I was able to appreciate those around me who were so helpful. From my parents, to the doctors, to the medical assistant who gave me a plastic ring, they couldn’t have dealt with my fragile, four-year-old psyche any better. Hopefully one day, somewhere along the public health spectrum, I can be the comforting force to some fragile and innocent child.