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Thoughts after the surgery


환자와 함께 걸어가는 부천대성병원 소아기형·왜소증클리닉입니다.

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[Congenital diseases] I used to have passive attitude and mind

관리자
2023-01-30
조회수 64

[Congenital diseases] I used to have passive attitude and mind

 

My parents are fishermen. When my mom was pregnant with me, she used to live with my dad’s family without my dad and raise all my aunts. Because my dad was a fisherman, there were a lot of times when he didn’t come home for 3 years. Even now, my mom doesn’t eat much. I think it’s because she has been mentally too tired, anyways, she had a lot of stress and couldn’t eat much back then.

My mom told me that she took me to the hospital because I was crying too hard when I was about 3 months old. But the doctor told her that there was nothing wrong with me. She also told me that she couldn’t breastfeed me, so when she gave me milk, it would come right back out from my nostrils. She didn’t think it was anything serious and just thought that I didn’t want to drink it. I couldn’t eat much when I was growing up, so I didn’t grow much and was underweight. Around the time I was 1 year old, I was taken to Young-Dong Severance Hospital for a general check-up. There, I was diagnosed with the cleft palatewith an enlarged throat and was operated. I had to wait for 6 months for the surgery, which I received when I was 4 years old, because it was a big university hospital. I received another surgery the next year when I turned 5.

Despite the surgery, I couldn’t talk properly so I had speech therapies for 3 years. I was still lacking in cognitive and speech skills. I also had speech therapies when I was in kindergarten, which I went until I was 8 years old, 3 years in total. So I went entered elementary school 1 year later because my mom wanted to wait until I could speak well enough.

My parents got divorced when I was in 2nd grade in elementary school. As if that was not enough, my mom ended up having to pay all of my dad’s debts. Because my mother couldn’t take care of both me and my older sister, she sent us to live with my maternal grandparents. After I moved to the new place, I couldn’t really adjust to the new environment at home or at school.

The neighborhood that I moved to was one of the poorest of the poorest areas. But I had fun playing with my friends and there was a strong bond between us. But there were also kids who like to gossip and show off themselves, using vulgar language. So naturally I couldn’t play with other kids since I was too shy and timid, and it became worse as I got older.

During my adolescent time, I became even more shy and introverted because I wanted to look good to other boys. I couldn’t get used to my school and I began to get bullied by other kids since grade 4. Also, I didn’t get along with my grandma because I didn’t like the way she took care of the house. Conflicts just grew bigger and I had no sense of calmness in my heart. The bullying became the worst in grade 6.

I was always number 41 in class (that time we were numbered by our birth date). Even though I wanted to hide that I was 1 year older, most people found out about it, which got me very upset. Not that I had an active personality, but I think I began to have more passive school life, passive attitude, and passive thoughts.

When I was in middle school, I was always number 1, because we were numbered by our height. I was okay with my friends in middle school, compared to my elementary school friends. But looking back, I don’t think I really had a true friend. The classmate I sat next to was 165cm tall, I was upset that I was too small and short. I couldn’t be sociable with my classmates. On top of that, the kids from the same elementary school came up to me during break times and would make fun of me and look down on me. They also disturbed me and the children that I wanted to get close to. It was the worst during the freshman year of middle school, and even a couple of years later, some kids made fun of me during a big group meeting. I couldn’t let my family know about it (didn’t have the personality to) and I couldn’t really communicate with them since my grandfather was ill and my mom lived somewhere else. My grandparents didn’t pay attention to my education, not that I had the willingness for it (to be precise, I didn’t know what was going on), so I felt like I was being led to a wrong path.

Likewise, I wanted to hide my past in high school. I couldn’t get along with the people and it was hard to keep up with the studies as well. I wanted to drop out of high school but my family couldn’t afford it, so I had to go to school with absolutely no willingness. I was very far from an ideal world, I didn’t have the people relation that I wanted, so I was mentally very stressed out and exhausted. I couldn’t initiate a conversation from being too prideful, and I felt very miserable because I knew what my family had been through. When I was in grade 2 in high school, I heard the news that my growth plates had completely closed after examinations, so I was in total despair and felt like I lost all my strength.

Even in university, I couldn’t get close to the friends I wanted to get close to. I felt the sense of relative deprivation as I had more time to compare myself with other people through TV or the Internet, or when I saw people dating. My height stopped growing in grade 4 despite all my wishes to grow taller. So I was blaming everyone and had a negative outlook toward life.

I used to use the Internet a lot since I was a student. One day after I got into a university, I briefly mentioned about the leg lengthening surgery to my mom. But she thought it was a good idea so I ended up going to see Professor Song unexpectedly. Luckily, I had insurance coverage, so we ended up scheduling for the surgery in a few months. I remember the surgery lasting for almost 9 hours long. Maybe because my legs were strong enough, I didn’t feel any pain after the surgery. But the balloon blowing part, which was done to prevent the lungs from shrinking, was difficult since I couldn’t drink any water. I was able to walk to the restroom by myself the first week, and through practicing I became good enough to walk alone by the 2nd week.

I came back home to Busan, which was far from the hospital. After I came home, I think I got too careless about exercising, because I didn’t have much problem when I got out of the surgery. The distance to the bathroom that used to take me 2 minutes, took 40 minutes, I had lost all my appetite and everything just got too overwhelming physically and mentally. So I ended up having the equinus deformity correction from not exercising enough. I felt horrible about another surgery and accused my mom of not carefully checking up on me. I felt like I wasn’t the one who initially wanted to go to the hospital and have the surgery. Even at the hospital, they had just told me that I needed to exercise hard, without any information about having to go through another surgery for tendon if I couldn’t walk. I also had depression because I stayed home alone for too long. The thing I hated the most was that I had an unattractive scar from the bone marrow graft that I didn’t want to get.

The hospital should have told me that there would be a huge scar and given me a choice whether I want to have the surgery or not. The way how they just discussed with my parents and let me know about the surgery as a notice really dragged me more into depression and despair. I didn’t want to go out or exercise looking ugly like that, so I told myself to take things slowly, instead of trying to finish things quickly. I was mentally exhausted because I felt like people were pointing fingers at me that I was just that type of person who cannot change. I was not really an active person even before, so it was more difficult and overwhelming for me to do the rehabilitation exercises.

These days, I have more free time and presence of mind, so I have been healing by slowly forgetting about the hard times I had in the past. I have had had times in the past, so I hope to have good days in the future.

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