Last question for me this evening.
What's your most vivid childhood memory?
When I was 4 my appendix ruptured and I had to have emergency surgery. Most of my vivid memories come from that whole terrible experience that lasted weeks.
Before the surgery, I remember lying on a bed in a room and the nurse was explaining to me what was going to happen. I can still see her face leaning over me telling me they were going to put me to sleep and cut open my belly and take out what was making me sick. Rather than be relieved, I was HORRIFIED. I didn't understand that it wasn't going to hurt and blah blah blah. She walked away, and my dad walked over to me and held my hand. He leaned leaned over me, and in a painfully poetc, Lifetime movie type of scene, we just stared at eachother, and one tear fell down my cheek, and then I watched one tear fall down his cheek. I remember that despite everything that was going on, I wasn't thinking one single thing. I was just staring at him. Then they wheeled me into the operating room, and they were all wearing those masks. They asked me if I wanted one, and I really really wanted one, but I said no because I was too shy. Then they had me count backwards from 100 (I was 4 years old - I have no idea why they chose 100) and I fell asleep with some nurse staring at me from upside down.
After the surgery I was an hour and a half away from home, and all I wanted was to go home. I was really homesick so I wouldn't eat. I was in the hospital for 11 days, because the doctor kept saying that he couldn't send me home until I was eating.
The part I remember is lying on my bed with my mom sitting on a chair next to me. She was putting food on my spoon and begging me to eat. I felt bad for making her upset, but I just had no appetite. I looked at her and said, "I don't want to eat. I just want to go home. I promise I'll eat at home." My mom's eyes filled with tears and she looked at the doctor, standing behind her. He looked her and looked at me and sighed and said, in his little Japanese accent that I'll never forget, "She can go home now." I jumped up off the bed and ran to my mom and gave her the biggest hug ever, and I remember being slightly confused because I couldn't stop crying, even though I wasn't sad.