The Correction

The Correction

When I was aged 6½ I was scheduled for a Sternotomy, also known as open heart surgery. Since the odds of me not making it through were high, and the doctors didn’t want to cause my mother to have
a repeat miscarriage, the surgery was scheduled after the birth of my youngest brother. I must have known enough to be scared because when it came time, I had a cold. My mother believed that it was a fake cough to get out of the surgery. Whichever it was, the surgery was rescheduled and then when an earlier opening became available, she scheduled it without telling me so that I would not have time to create another cold. We just went to a regular appointment and I was admitted.

Being young, I only have a few memories of that time. I remember being alone a lot. Having five children at home, life had to go on without me. I remember being in a crib. Over the end of the crib hung a net bag that held all the toys that had been provided by my mom. My only memory of the kinds of toys was an Etch-A-Sketch. Then I had the surgery.

I remember an out-of-body experience in the operating room. I was floating up high, looking down at myself and the doctors as they worked. My next memory is of me waking up in the Recovery Room and lying naked, except for a tea towel over my body, and being cold because there was a window open. I woke up with an oxygen mask on my face and was terrified and tried to pull the mask off. As I passed in and out of consciousness, I recall my mother and Dolores talking about a thirteen year old boy who had had the same surgery but had died in the bed next to mine. As I grew older, I realized that the trauma of the experience had caused me to forget much of my early childhood memories.

I just remember being alone. I sat alone on the porch while my siblings and neighborhood friends played and rode their bicycles. After a neighborhood kid hit me and caused my incision to bleed, I was relegated to watching through a window. Even when I was healed, I was still alone. The fact that I didn’t start school until the second grade, left me unprepared to enter the social situations of school. The most embarrassing classroom incident was my falling asleep and peeing my pants.

I was alone at home too. I had been such a terror when I was younger, my siblings turned the table and did the same to me. Being left alone while mom worked opened up opportunities for them to terrorize me. One trick was for the older two to tell the youngest child to kick me and when I hit him back, they
had their opportunity to protect him by beating me up. They had learned that from my step-father who used the trick on my mom.

I had already learned mistrust. My father would let me cuddle up to him and when I was comfortable and secure he would bite me on the arm. After a while I learned that no one but my mother could be trusted and she was never home. The lack of social skills and mistrust caused me to sit in the corner, keep quiet, listen, and never put myself forward to be hurt. As a teenager, the pain of loneliness overwhelmed me and I couldn’t believe that there was a purpose for my life. At the age of thirteen, I tried to commit suicide.