🏥 What it means to have grown up with prolonged hospitalization and medical trauma
Growing up with extended hospital stays and medical procedures meant your childhood was defined by adult medical realities, making your body feel like territory that others could invade without permission.
You may have experienced pain, vulnerability, and helplessness as normalized parts of daily life, learning early that your body could betray you when you needed it most. While other children played and explored the world, you might have navigated complex medical procedures, learned medical terminology, and developed a premature awareness of mortality and physical fragility that set you apart from your peers.
Your relationship with your body likely remains complicated—you may feel either completely disconnected from physical sensations or hypervigilant to every change in how you feel. Medical settings might trigger visceral responses that flood you with memories of vulnerability and loss of control. You learned early that health is fragile and that illness can strike without warning, creating a deep sense that you're never truly safe in your own skin.