Childhood Pneumonia, Hospital Hallways, and the Season That Rewired My Life
When I was ten, I caught the flu that was sweeping through Michigan that winter—one of those “everyone has it” strains from 2003 (something like the Venetian flu, if memory serves). Mom took me to the pediatrician, where I picked up pneumonia right there in the waiting room like an unwanted party favor. We went home afterward, thinking it was just the flu doing flu things…until, within a few days, I started crashing hard. That’s when she rushed me back in, and things got serious fast.
I don’t remember much beyond the sudden escalation: color draining from my face, multiple staff members surrounding me, and someone calling an ambulance.
That was my first lesson in how fast normal can evaporate. One minute you’re a kid with the flu, the next you’re a problem being urgently solved by adults who suddenly look afraid. I didn’t have language for it then, but something in my body clock recalibrated that day. Safety stopped feeling like a default setting and became something fragile—conditional.
The nurse who cared for me that day became my regular nurse for the rest of my childhood and teen years. Years later, when I brought it up at 18 or 19, she told me it had been her first day—and that she never forgot me because of it. There’s something oddly grounding about knowing you’re someone else’s origin story too.
The Child-Sized Stretcher I Did Not Fit On
When the ambulance arrived, they brought a children’s stretcher—reasonable, given my age. Slight complication: I was tall for ten. They loaded me up anyway, my feet dangling off the end like a makeshift hospital marionette.
I don’t remember the ride, but my dad likes to remind me that he nearly pulled out in front of the ambulance as he was meeting us at the hospital.
I spent three weeks in the hospital and missed school from Christmas break all the way to spring break. At ten, that feels like disappearing from the world. Like life kept moving while I was quietly removed from it.
Two Lung Collapses, Three Chest Tubes, and Pain I’ll Never Forget
My left lung collapsed twice, shrinking down to the size of a raisin both times. The first collapse earned me one chest tube; the second earned me two.
One of those tube removals is burned into my memory. The anesthesiologist wasn’t available, so they gave me morphine and pulled the tube out while I was awake. I can still remember the grooves scraping along my ribcage, making a zipper sound inside my body. It was the worst physical pain I have ever endured.
That pain taught me something I didn’t fully understand until much later: the body can endure things the mind refuses to believe are survivable. It also taught me that being brave is sometimes just being trapped and conscious while something awful happens to you anyway.
The other two tubes were removed while I was blissfully unconscious.
PICC Lines, Spirometers, and Strange Sensations
I needed a PICC line—a peripherally inserted central catheter, basically a long, flexible tube threaded through a vein in my arm and toward my heart so medications could be delivered without constant IV pokes. They later had to adjust it, and the sensation was deeply strange in a way that stays with you.
I also had to use a spirometer (a clear plastic device you inhale through to expand your lungs). My lung power was so weak it looked like I was trying to inflate a balloon from across the room.
I became hyper-aware of my body in a way most ten-year-olds aren’t. Every breath was something I had to think about. Every sensation had to be monitored. That kind of attention doesn’t turn off easily. It follows you.
Mom, the Chair-Bed, and the House-Episode Surgery Briefing
Mom stayed with me nearly nonstop, sleeping upright in the chair beside my bed. The only times she left were quick trips home to keep the house functioning—because, to put it gracefully, my dad didn’t have the practical skills to manage things solo. It wasn’t traditional gender roles; it was a household competence imbalance.
Mom told me later that before one of my surgeries, she sat in on the doctors’ pre-op meeting. She said it looked exactly like an episode of House—a bunch of brilliant people passionately diagnosing and debating my tiny collapsing lung like it was a plot twist.
Watching adults debate my body like a puzzle did something strange to me. I learned how to read rooms early. I learned that authority figures don’t always agree. I learned that answers are negotiated, not handed down. That lesson shows up everywhere in my life now.
To pass the time, she and I played card games—endless rounds that made the hours feel a little less medical and a little more like home.
Pigtails, Picture Perfect, and Monkey Pajamas
Hospital life came with strange comforts. They let me wear my new pajamas—the ones I’d just gotten for Christmas: pink, covered in monkeys, and made of soft crushed-velvet material that felt luxurious compared to a hospital gown.
Mom kept trying to put my hair in pigtails because a giant knot was forming at the back of my head from lying down constantly.
The premiere of Picture Perfect aired while I was there, and it became the background soundtrack of my recovery—rom-com brightness cutting through IV poles and vital-sign beeps.
Beanie Babies, Tunnel Walks, and the Charm Bracelet
The staff gifted me Beanie Babies—including a frog like the one I’d loved as a younger kid. Someone also came around with a selection of movies I could choose from, which felt like magic in the early 2000s.
To get me moving, Mom would wheel me to the glass tunnel that connects two parts of the hospital over the road. I’d walk the length of the tunnel—my little hero’s journey—and then we’d visit the gift shop.
That’s where I built a charm bracelet one trinket at a time, filling the cracks between medical trauma with tiny, glittery milestones. Looking back, it feels like my first attempt at meaning-making. Proof that progress could be tracked. That suffering could be measured. That if I just kept walking the tunnel, I’d eventually earn something shiny on the other side.
The shop still exists today. The charms don’t.
Get-Well Notes and Devastating Fourth-Grade Gossip
My class sent get-well cards. One friend used hers to deliver the news that my crush had moved away.
A thoughtful detail to add to my near-death experience. Nothing like mixing heartbreak with pulmonary collapse.
I still have those notes. Proof that even when things break, they don’t always break completely.
Home, Hair Loss, Jamie & Wendy
Once I was home, I camped out on our chaise like an exhausted Victorian child recovering from consumption. Mom brought two friends—Jamie and Wendy—home to visit.
Jamie was kind. Wendy liked tugging on my hair…at a time when I was losing so much of it. I had no idea then that low protein intake contributes to hair loss. My poor ten-year-old scalp didn’t stand a chance.
Skipping the MEAP & Life Afterward
Returning to school came with one silver lining: I didn’t have to take the MEAP (the Michigan Educational Assessment Program, the dreaded statewide standardized test). Missing gym for a while also felt like a tiny blessing.
To this day, I still have scar tissue in my left lung. It doesn’t affect me much unless I really overdo it. A doctor once told me I’d never be an opera singer, which feels fair.
I’m also more sensitive to smoke than most people. And while I probably would’ve been fine experimenting like other teens, surviving a double lung collapse was enough to keep me far from cigarettes or pot.
I didn’t walk out of that hospital the same kid who went in. I walked out older—more careful, more observant, less reckless with my body and my trust. I learned early that bodies can fail without warning, that recovery isn’t linear, and that people don’t always come back when you’re gone.
Some kids collect childhood memories like stickers.
I collected medical charts, charm bracelets, and a lung that staged two dramatic exits before I hit middle school.
Honestly? Still kind of metal.
But also…foundational.
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