I originally posted this on my Facebook page, but I decided to copy it here as well. This might well be one of my most personal stories you’ll ever read here on GJ, or on the internet in general. I am trying to word things as I experienced them, when I was a little boy. So some things that I say not to know, is how I knew things back when I was a little kid.
This makes a pretty sensitive read:

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It’s funny sometimes, how some things which you would normally hardly #remember at all, suddenly come back. I remember that my ears were checked all the time, by an old man. Doctor Verlier. And old friendly, yet funny man. He was sitting in a strange room. All dark, with only a few lights on, a strange kind of band around his head with a circle shaped mirror on it with a hole in the middle. He checked my ears, several times. I do remember I had to come back to him a few times. How I was sitting in the waiting room, until I heard him calling my name over the intercom. And suddenly he said that I had to come to sleep at his place (“bij mij logeren” as he said that in Dutch). And so I was lying in a bed in the #hospital. A kind nurse pushed my bed through the corridors. I had no idea back then what the hell was going on. I don’t even remember, how I experienced it. Was it interesting? Fun? Or was I trembling with fear? I wish I knew. And suddenly I arrived and several man in strange green clothes with silly blue swimming caps were waiting for me.
“Look,” the nurse told me. “The doctors are already waiting for you.”
I can’t fully recall what was all happening. I do remember I recognized Dr. Verlier at once, despite him wearing that same silly swimming cap as well, like the rest of the doctors. I do remember a woman was there as well. Also dressed in that strange green clothes and silly swimming cap. Mama? Is that you? And I don’t remember what happened next. Little did I realize back that, it would be impossible to remember. I was suddenly in a strange room. I heard some strange soft noises. And that was all. I opened my eyes and only then I saw that a strange band was around my arm, with a pump attached to it. Why was it there? Who did put it onto my arm? I remember seeing a band just like that before, among my doctor toys. But what the …. was it for? My memory may be wrong, but I believe to the right of me was only a wall, and to the left of me, a bed where another kid was. I really don’t know who that was. A boy? A girl? Even that I don’t know. He or she was lying there, looking at me. Was he/she afraid? Of me? Or of something else? Where was I? How did I get here? I vaguely remember that the other kid looked kinda bad. Stuff attached to his/her face? Or is my memory betraying me? The face of that kid looking at me, is something I remember. What the face looked like, I don’t know anymore, but that he/she was looking at me, that is something I keep remembering a lot, lately, and somehow, it doesn’t let go of me…
Later at the age of 7, oh yeah, I am pretty sure about my age, I had to stay at Dr. Verlier’s place again. However, something frightened me back then. Due to somebody close to me being under surgery not long before that because of a shattered knee, I was told what “#surgery” actually was.
“They cut open your stomach, they all clean up everything inside and they’ll stitch it back closed, and in the case of the shattered knee, cut open that knee, clean it up and close it.” Damn, that must have scared the crap out of me somehow. Remember I was a kid. Only 7 years old. And when I had to undergo the same treatment again, I came into the operating room and the first thing I saw, and I’ve been afraid of that thing for the rest of my life, was a big odd thing on the ceiling. I had NO IDEA what it was (now that I’m in my 40 I know it’s a surgery lamp. Just a lamp, only a rather big and very bright one, but still, just a lamp), and that thing struck me with fear. And then that strange thing was put on my mouth, and I lost control. I’m an #aspie. An and aspie, a kid, not fully realizing what is going on, losing control? Yeah, I panicked. I remember myself shouting “Ik wil niet” (I don’t wanna). I kept it yelling that same sentence over and over until I lost consciousness due to the anesthesia. And when I woke up it appeared that my body had not taken very kindly of the anesthesia. I kept puking the rest of the day. I felt really really horrible. It ddn’t help that a few kids festivities took place in the room where I was lying in order to recover.

These experiences kept with me, until they faded away. It wouldn’t be until I was late in my twenties before I would have to undergo surgery again. And that was because of an accident, and I had to go to the operation chamber the very same day.
“Nou je kijkt er ook niet bepaald vrolijk bij” (Well, you don’t look very cheerful) is what one of the doctors said when I was brought to the chamber. Man, I wanted to kill him (figuratively speaking, of course). My finger was maimed and being treated and a little table was being attached to the surgery table while I was still awake. THAT was confronting, I tell ya. A few year later I had to have my wisdom teeth removed (is that really what they are called in English??). My girlfriend was with me, until the moment I fainted for the anesthesia, but the words the anesthetist came up with. “Are you nervous?” Man, he was enjoying himself, wasn’t he? Yeah, I was trembling with fear.

Now the funny part. I have extreme fear for the dentist, and some treatments, normally done in a normal dentist room were for that reason done under anesthesia, and the funny part is that I underwent it without much trouble at all.

And now you wonder, why I am telling you all this, aren’t you? Aren’t you? Because the memories of “Ik will niet” while the anesthetist was attaching the heart meters to my body and the other doctors were putting that, “thing” (what is it called) on my face.And the face of that kid I mentioned earlier while I was awakening from the earliest anesthesia I underwent in my memory (as I’ve also been treated before at the age of 3, and I do remember stuff from that time,but not the surgery). I’ve slept terribly because of it. And I feel like a man on death row awaiting his execution. You, may have guessed it, I’m about to undergo surgery again, and this time not a really light kind of treatment either. I have a terrible case of gallstones, and actually I’ve been suffering for at least 20 years because of them, never knowing they were to blame, and now my gallbladder will be removed. Last Monday, the surgeon told me he’s going to remove that thing, after I was sent to him after a kind of “seizure” (as I call it) of unbearable pain in my belly, revealing the gallstones at least. I am glad, that at least many questions about what was wrong the past 20 years have been answered. Some mysteries about my body have now been solved, at last. But now, my “phobia” for scary surgery comes back. My fear for the surgery lamp! It’s just a lamp, Jeroen…. yeah, I know, but that thing has become symbolic for me for scary treatments. “Ik wil niet”, how I kept on yelling it, before fainting away, and that kid lying in the bed next to mine, I keep seeing them over and over and over. I try to block them out, but I can’t. And this is why I wrote this, in English, so that no only the Dutch speaking people who are close to me will understand, but my English speaking friends will understand this,, as well. I just wrote this, hoping I could let it go that way (do I sound like Elsa, now?) I do not even know if the early part of this story is the way it really happened. I was a kid, back then, remember. But it has stuck with me, and is haunting me now. Thanks for reading this silly story, about some silly childhood memories and how they influenced me over time, and how they #haunt me now. Geez… I feel so silly now…. Or am I not?