Thank you for bringing up a long-repressed memory of a very traumatic experience. This is probably my earliest memory, and it's not a good one.

I developed asthma when I was about three, and I had to go to the hospital more than once when I was a wee little thing. So I was in the hospital, on oxygen in a crib with a plastic tent around it. The nurse had just checked on me, and I remember her walking away, and I saw the little girl next to me, just old enough to stand up in her crib, pull the oxygen hose out of my little airtight plastic tent. I yelled and banged on the side of the crib, but the nurse didn't hear me (I think her name was Mrs. Webb, and she was actually a very good nurse otherwise), and she just kept walking down the aisle to the other side of the ward. I was terrified, frantic, panicking, watching her walk away. After that everything went black, and the next thing I remember is waking up, being sponged off and breathing lovely air again (I'm sure it was antiseptic and hospital-smelly air, but it was air, and it was the best air I ever breathed).

I'm not sure if they ever told my parents what happened, because they did take me back to the same hospital again.
(magiceyes, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 22:43, Reply)