I’d Lie to the Pediatrician If It Meant I’d Survive

“This is trauma.”

The carrot: A trip to the beach in southern Maryland — photo by author

I thought about skipping my son’s two-year wellness checkup. We’d moved from Maine to Maryland a month before his second birthday.

Eagerly, I canceled his prescheduled checkup in Maine via the patient portal. “See ya never!” I said as I slammed the laptop shut and walked away. It was the least traumatizing patient portal visit I’d had in years.

Traumatizing pediatric experiences were setting like the sun in the backdrop of my life. With it came a feeling of calm, almost peace, because those Maine pediatrician visits would likely never rise again.

It’s not personal to the pediatrics practice. Once, I had considered applying to it after nursing school, but then our eight-month-old daughter June became sick. She was preliminarily diagnosed with cancer in the outpatient clinic, which sat in a building adjacent to where I took my kids for all of their sick and wellness visits. They shared a parking lot. The same lot I had driven June into and parked on the day we were told she might have “CHILDHOOD CANCER.” The two words I could see etched in the air around the pediatrician’s head after she’d spoken them. In order for me to process them, I needed to visualize them. To understand what she had just told me, I had to painfully spell the two words out in my mind.

Now, here we were in Maryland, in our new home, beginning our new life. A life I wished would lend only to healthiness and minimal doctor’s visits for both my husband and I, and our two and five year old kids.

What harm could come from skipping my son’s two-year wellness checkup? He wouldn’t start daycare for a while and was up to date on his immunizations. I knew he wouldn’t carry MMR to the local playground, so why not skip? For now. I’d eventually take him. I’m a traumatized mother, not a terrible one.

“He needs an appointment,” my conscience nagged.

“A good mother would follow his check-up schedule,” it said.

“A good mother would put her trauma aside and do what’s best for her son by finding and calling a damn provider.”

But I couldn’t.

I mothered June, who was diagnosed with cancer at eight months old until the day she died at eighteen months old. I showed up for every appointment. I laid awake her entire life trying to sort out ‘today’s’ problems, which were many. Initially, it was what was wrong with her, then it was if she would survive treatment complications, and ultimately, the anxiety that treatment wasn’t working.

During hospitalizations, I sprung from bed at every beeping alarm, throw-up, or messy diaper. The thought of another person caring for June in the simple ways I could provide care, such as changing her diaper or cleaning her up in the middle of the night, petrified me. My sheer existence and self-identity were as June’s caregiver.

Without her, I was nothing. With her, I became nothing, too. I was an amoeba crawling toward the next task demanded of me. One, I’d eat up for survival, day or night, in order to feed my broken motherly soul.

I didn’t just consume the day’s tasks; I also poured every ounce of loving energy I had into June, who I feared might die. As if my willpower was enough to keep her alive. So, in the fade of the green and white lights coming from the machines to which she was tethered, I’d hover over her, cleaning, changing, talking, telling, willing her to live.

“I love you, June,” I whispered one hundred times a night.

What if it was the last time?

………………….

The week our son turned two, I finally brought myself to Google pediatricians in my area. It was anxiety-provoking. I scoured online reviews. I slammed the laptop shut and walked away again and again.

Finally, I settled on a practice with only one pediatrician. It felt strange that a large practice would only have one pediatrician, but for that exact reason, it felt safe and new. I didn’t need doctors and their multiple wandering eyes putting their noggins together to determine anything about my children. I needed one. I needed new. My memory of bouncing from pediatrician to pediatrician just before June was diagnosed funneled me into this decision three years later.

I requested the appointment online, which also felt safer than calling an answering service. I can still hear the music playing from our children’s pediatrician’s answering service in Maine. I can see myself standing at the kitchen sink, the only place I’d have perfect cell phone reception. I’d hang on to the melody as I gripped the edge of the sink. As if one of them would suddenly become my savior. I’d listen to the melody that became our life while hanging onto the sink that kept me standing upright.

………………….

To my dismay, the appointment was confirmed. I requested it just far enough out that I would not have to go in right away but not so far that I would have to live in purgatory very long.

Each morning thereafter, I’d wake up in our new home and wander downstairs. The calendar on the counter beckoning me toward it.

My eyes traced from today’s date to the date of the appointment. I’d count the number of days until the appointment, reminding myself to breathe deeply, in and out. I’d talk myself through the process of bringing our son to the pediatrician. I’d try to imagine what it would be like. Sometimes I’d enter the address in Google Maps to see how long the drive would take, and other times, I’d plan my morning the day of the appointment. Who knew? Maybe I’d sleep through it.

Then, I’d force myself to find one positive thing planned for the week of the appointment. At first, it didn’t exist, so I created it. The carrot. The bacon. The whatever the fuck you want to call it so I could not only survive—but also be rewarded for my survival. So that I could fantasize how life continued after bringing my child to a healthcare setting. I did this every day for nearly three weeks.

This is trauma.

………………….

The night before the appointment was reminiscent of nights we prepared to take June into the hospital for a procedure or another round of chemo. I paced the kitchen, unknowingly placing plates, cups, and bowls in cabinets where they didn’t belong. I did the same in the bedroom after putting the kids to bed, picking up dirty socks, and dropping them in corners on the opposite side of the room. I tried to play it cool so that my husband didn’t start to worry. I looked busy without completing a task.

Grief, fear, and trauma were eating my brain.

………………….

I thought about lying to the doctor when he asked me if our son had any past medical history. I knew he wouldn’t have the medical records yet because I hadn’t requested them. That was a separate trauma in itself. Calling the pediatrician’s office in Maine. The music. It was something I decided I would take care of after overcoming the initial hurdle of visiting a new pediatrician.

The day before his appointment, I texted a close friend and said, “Should I tell the pediatrician about his kidney?”

Yes, his kidney.

Like a good friend, who watched me go through cancer treatment and end-of-life with June, she told me it wouldn’t be the end of the world if I didn’t. For me, explaining our son’s kidney issues felt like a matter of life and death.

It meant I’d have to schedule an appointment with the radiologist to do an ultrasound. Radiologist. Ultrasound. Another healthcare setting. Waiting room. Jelly, wand, sterility, black screen. Ultrasound tech. Provider in the back. Help.

With my friend’s support, I decided I wouldn’t tell the doctor unless he looked me in the eye and asked me about it. I wouldn’t commit a bald-faced lie, but I was prepared to lie by omission.

Life or death.

………………….

The real issue that was looming was the same week we moved to Maryland, the pediatric nephrology office in Maine called me to confirm the two-year ultrasound of his left kidney. It upped the ante on my lie. I felt like I was tying bricks to my feet before jumping off the float. The bottom was there regardless, and I could take the path of least resistance and be honest from the start, or I could drown myself in the process.

During the anatomy scan when I was pregnant with our son, just before June passed away, the sonographer noticed my son’s left kidney was retaining urine. The doctor diagnosed it as mild hydronephrosis due to a narrow ureter that he’d likely outgrow. It was the end of the world.

“This is common in boys and nothing to worry about,” the sonographer assured me as I lay crying on the examination table.

Then, later, after I had collected my belongings and was leaving the office, she ran up to me and said, “Taryn, I did a complete examination of the kidney itself. It’s healthy. Taryn, this is not a tumor.”

We were standing in the hallway, staring at one another, when I burst into tears. She didn’t have to do that, and she knew my ultimate fear. She knew June’s tumor had grown from the adrenal gland, which sat on top of her left kidney. She grabbed me and squeezed me. My son, in my belly, wedged between us.

I’ll never forget that sonographer, her eyes, her face, the glasses she wore. She and I developed a connection rooted in trauma.

The thing about connections rooted in trauma is that, even despite some of them being brief, they run as deep as our arteries. They create a permanent pathway that can never be forgotten. A pathway that leads to comfort during the most painful times in life.

………………….

I almost didn’t tell the pediatrician about our son’s kidney, although when we arrived at the office, oddly, the kidney didn’t weigh on my heart. June did. In all of the angst leading up to the day, I hadn’t considered the doctor asking me about our family medical history. It occurred to me as we walked into the office that I’d have to tell him about June.

The doctor was kind, gentle, and soft-spoken. He was efficient and didn’t unnecessarily poke or prod my son.

“Is there any past family medical history relating to the children I should be aware of?” he asked.

My lips quivered.

“Um,” is all I could say before the eruption of tears.

“Oh, here we go again,” my five-year-old daughter said, perched upon the examination table next to her brother.

The doctor looked at me, looked at her, then back at me with bulging eyes. I started laughing but quickly fell back into tears as I explained we had lost our daughter to neuroblastoma two short years ago.

“Just two years ago, but it feels like no time has passed,” I said.

I could hear my voice trailing off, which meant I knew it was futile to attempt to explain this to someone who hadn’t lived it before.

Still, every time I feel the need to say, it feels like no time has passed. The trauma is no less. The pain is equal to the day she died. Those things have not changed.

I needed the pediatrician to know. I need everyone to know. The pain after losing a child does not go away. Time may as well have stopped for eternity. It only becomes slightly more bearable.

Instead of allowing the pain to control me, I make it shape itself around me. I am able to put it aside until it comes up. I’ve been able to continue living.

“You know I lost my baby,” I said to my daughter as we walked out the office doors into the warm, humid Maryland May air.

“You remember, my baby died,” I said like I was talking to a twenty-year-old. She’s five.

It hurt to say. I hated myself for saying it the second the words left my mouth. She knew. She’d lost her sister. None of it is easy, and her response to my crying was likely reactive and protective. She hates it when I shed tears about June.

“I know, mama! You always cry about Junie,” she said.

Yeah, so?

………………….

After being honest about June with the doctor, it felt a little easier to be honest about other things too, like our son’s kidney ultrasounds, which he’d had in utero, at birth, at six months, and at one year of age.

The hydronephrosis has continued to improve. He has stayed asymptomatic throughout his life. It’s unlikely he will ever need surgery to correct the ureter. Hopefully, it will widen on its own.

There was never anything to fear. A normal brain would know that, but my brain is not normal. It has been molded and contorted in ways it was never meant to survive. There is so much I’ll never live again. And there is so much I can never unsee.

On the drive home, I felt the usual post-trauma exhaustion. After facing triggers, such as doctor’s visits, I can often fall asleep the moment I arrive home. My husband would tell you that I am not a napper. He’s been telling me for eleven years I should go take a nap, but I can’t.

When we arrived home, instantly, I fell asleep with the kids in our bed. I squeezed them both in my arms and slept like I hadn’t slept in years.

This is life after losing your child.

………………….

I never want trauma to inhibit the safety of my living children or for my issues to come between my children and what they need.

Later, when my brain had cleansed itself of the weeks of worry, I tucked the prescription slip the doctor had printed and signed for our son’s follow-up ultrasound inside the calendar where I could forget about it. Then, with hesitation, I pulled it out and set it on top of the calendar. It would be there when I was ready to do some more research and after I had taken a long break. I wasn’t going to forget it for too long. I wouldn't come between preventative care and my son.

I’d completed the hard thing of the week. There will be more. I’m learning sometimes the hard thing is the best thing.

From the beginning, I knew I needed to make the appointment and to reveal past medical history to the new pediatrician, but in this extremely triggering situation, I also needed an escape. This time, it was in the form of a lie. A lie to myself? Definitely. A lie to the pediatrician? Possibly. It was a bit of salvation during the complete and uncontrolled chaos of going to the doctor. I’m not a liar. I love my children. I’d do everything and anything for them.

Two years after June has died, I’m still trying to navigate the tumultuous waters of trauma. Somehow, I’m still afloat. I think it’s the pain that keeps me buoyant. If I push it away, or if I ignore it, I know I will sink. The pain is the reminder that I am alive. The reminder to keep treading.

And by working with it, and not against it, I continue to improve the chances that I will survive.