When Healing Hurts: The Hidden Trauma of Childhood Medical Experiences Written by Christina Gonzalez, MSW
Trigger Warning: Childhood medical trauma stories and suicidal ideation.
This is a guest blog post written by Christina Gonzalez, MSW.
When Healing Hurts: The Hidden Trauma of Childhood Medical Care
Imagine being a child, strapped to a hospital bed while adults pin down your arms and legs. You scream for them to stop, but they don’t. The procedure goes on, and you’re left with the terrifying sense that your body is no longer your own.
For many children with chronic illnesses, this isn’t a nightmare, it’s memory.
I know this because I was one of those children. My name is Christina Gonzalez and I’m 26 years old. I’m a social worker who just recently graduated from CSU Stanislaus.
I am the twin who wasn’t supposed to survive twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome. I was born sickly, in pain, and I have never known a single day without it. My story is one of survival, but also of trauma, medical trauma that has shaped my body, mind, and the way I see the world.
This post weaves together my personal story leading to my choice of receiving my masters of social work degree with the findings of my graduate research, which explored how childhood medical trauma leaves lasting scars.
Growing Up Sick
My infancy, though I don’t remember it, was carefully documented by my mother and by the endless streams of doctors’ notes from neurologists, orthopedists, and specialists. Due to my premature birth I did have developmental delays and required early intervention care from our local regional center due to experiencing regression after sitting up at 9 months old. Then regressed. Then again at 11 months.11 months is an important time mark for my pain journey.
Even though the moment I was born I was in pain, however it would take until I was 11 months old for it to be figured out. I never wanted to be touched or held, I only wanted to be swaddled as tightly as possible, I cried and screamed with no comfort. My pain as a newborn must have been so traumatic I can’t even begin to imagine. My mom said she always knew something was wrong and it wasn’t just “ colic “. One of my very first words was OWW. Not something sweet like the name of a favorite toy, not daddy, but OWW. From the moment I could communicate I expressed my pain. From then on it became an uphill battle for doctors to listen. I can only imagine what it must have been like for a baby to endure so much medical attention so early in life.
By early toddler-hood, my pain was already dictating my world. I dragged myself across the floor because I couldn’t put pressure on my legs. I told my mom I felt “electricity in my body.” By age four, I was in physical therapy, and my life became a carousel of scans, imaging tests, and appointments that never offered answers.
What I do remember vividly is the cruelty of some doctors who dismissed my suffering as imaginary, or as a ploy for attention. To be in pain is one thing. To be told your pain isn’t real is another.
Losing My Teenage Years
By the time I was a teenager, relentless pain had stolen my high school years. The most consistent thing that I remember being told by doctors and what I would hear them tell my parents is that I would “grow out of my pain”. Unfortunately this never happened. It went from being growing pains, to an attention seeking teenager to a sick person with a real illness. It took years for them to recognize my pain and I’ll never forget that shift.One pediatric rheumatologist at UCSF who is a so-called “pain expert” and has written extensively on childhood pain conditions such as AMPS specifically told me ‘you are a 13 year old girl with a sick dad, you must just want attention.’ But what that doctor didn’t know is that my sickness has been happening much longer than my dad’s who became sick in 2008 when I was 9. I got sick in 2000 when I was 11 months old. Therefore his statement was wrong and just plain arrogant. I was used to being misunderstood by doctors but this was the last straw. I walked out of there crying with my heart broken believing that if this so-called expert couldn’t even help me, nobody could help me. I remember that day very vividly imagining myself going to the top floor of the high buildings around the city and picturing myself jumping to my death. I was so defeated and so angry. It’s been years since countless of those different memories and they still haunt me to this day, even in a non-medical trip to San Francisco.
It wasn’t just the pain, there was also the fact that my high school had no clue how to deal with me, I was being threatened with truancy due to all of my absences even though they had doctors notes. Securing educational accommodations became a battle, and if it weren’t for a compassionate social worker at UCSF Children’s Hospital, I might have fallen through the cracks altogether. She walked me through the process of independent study and explained my situation to teachers who doubted me. Without her, I don’t know what would have happened. But even with support, the disbelief and discrimination I faced from adults was crushing. Being in pain as a teenager takes your life from you, I never got to be a normal kid who went out and didn’t care about rules because I was stuck in the hospital most of my days. I’ll never forget how heartbreaking it was to feel so alone. My teachers couldn’t fathom that a child might truly be sick, and that disbelief changed me. Hearing grown adults say “wait until you’re my age, then you’ll know pain”. It was revolting. I learned very young that hospitals weren’t always places of healing. They were also places of trauma (physical, emotional, and psychological).
The Subtle Ways Trauma Stays With You
Pediatric healthcare networks serve millions of children each year. This leaves room for millions of children to experience traumatic medical events. Children may internalize the pain, fear, and powerlessness of medical procedures in ways that adults often don’t fully grasp
Not all trauma looks dramatic. Sometimes it hides in the everyday moments that should be ordinary but aren’t.
Public Bathrooms: I have paralyzing anxiety around peeing in public bathrooms. I believe it stems from childhood urine samples, when I was rushed by my stressed-out mom to “hurry up.” I don’t blame her, but the repeated pressure left me with a block I still can’t undo.
Perko’s Pancakes: After fasting for medical scans, my family would take me to Perko’s, where I’d get smiley-faced pancakes. At first they felt comforting, but over time the association soured. The pancakes became a symbol of trauma disguised as a treat. Even as an adult, seeing them again at Perko’s years later made me physically nauseous.
Chewy Chocolate Chip Bars: These were my reward after staying still during scans. They became less about sweetness and more about survival—a bribe for enduring something I didn’t want to endure.
The Medical Building: Driving past the medical building in my city still stirs unease. As a child, I used to howl like a wolf whenever we passed it. Maybe it was my way of resisting, of releasing distress without words. Even now, the memory of a radiology tech who jabbed a needle painfully into my arm returns every time I’m near that building.
These associations may sound small, but they are proof of how deeply medical trauma embeds itself in a child’s body and memory.
What it means to grow up in a medicalized world.
A few months ago, my boyfriend and I sat in the waiting room, waiting for my name to be called for yet another scan, I turned to him and asked, “Have you ever had a scan before?” I’d asked him this before, I knew the answer. But for some reason, I needed to hear it again.
“No,” he said, the same as last time.
And it hit me, just as hard as it did before.
You didn’t grow up like this?
You’ve never felt that gnawing fear? Never had to lie perfectly still as a machine roared and clanked around you? Never worn earplugs because the sounds were too loud to bear?
You’ve never been strapped down in a narrow, alien-like tube, hearing a distant, disembodied voice tell you, “Stop squirming”?
Never had an MRI? Never a CT scan? Not even an X-ray?
Not one?
It amazes me. Not in a casual way, but in a way that leaves me reeling. The idea that someone could move through childhood without these experiences feels so foreign, so distant, it’s almost unbelievable.
And yet, it’s not just luck, it’s privilege. A kind of privilege I can’t even imagine. To grow up without those worries, without that fear hanging over you, it must be so freeing.
I’ll never stop marveling at what it must be like to live in a body that has never been under the relentless gaze of a machine.
Researching the Trauma I Lived
Years later, when I began my graduate work, I realized something shocking: the medical trauma I experienced had no real place in the frameworks we use to define childhood adversity.
The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) framework has been groundbreaking in showing how abuse, neglect, and family dysfunction affect lifelong health. But one glaring omission remains: children who endure medical trauma are left out.
Millions of children live with chronic illnesses that require repeated hospitalizations, invasive procedures, and emotionally isolating environments. Their trauma is real. But rarely acknowledged.
To explore this gap, I conducted a qualitative study interviewing adults who grew up with chronic illness and invasive medical care. My research was guided by two questions:
How does living with a chronic medical condition during childhood contribute to trauma, as understood within the ACEs framework?
What are the long-term impacts of childhood chronic illness and medical trauma on adulthood?
What Participants Told Me
Three major themes emerged from the stories I collected:
1. Violation of Bodily Autonomy
Many participants described being restrained or forced into procedures without explanation. One recalled being held down by four nurses for a catheter placement. Another endured more than a dozen failed IV attempts while lying helpless as staff grew increasingly desperate.
The message to children is devastating: your body is not your own. That message doesn’t fade, it follows them into adulthood, where panic attacks and avoidance of medical care are common.
2. Emotional Neglect and Dehumanization
Participants weren’t just physically hurt, they were emotionally abandoned. Fear was dismissed, reactions were mocked, and children were treated as research subjects instead of human beings.
One participant remembered being laughed at for crying. Another was enrolled in multiple clinical trials and described feeling like a “test subject.”
Not one participant recalled being offered counseling or emotional support. For some, the pain was so overwhelming they questioned whether life was worth living.
This resonated with me deeply. I remember being 11 years old, sitting in English class, silently crying while everyone else read Esperanza Rising. I was secretly planning my death in my notebook, promising myself that if by 18 I was still in pain, I would end my life.
3. Institutional and Familial Betrayal
The betrayal wasn’t only by medical professionals. Sometimes families withheld information, or teachers doubted their pain. Many participants were excluded from conversations about their own diagnoses, sent to sit in waiting rooms while doctors spoke only to parents.
For children, this reinforced the idea that their voice didn’t matter. Hospitals became places of dread, not safety. Even as adults, many described panic attacks, nausea, and distrust whenever they had to return for care.
Why This Matters
The voices from my study, and my own story, make one thing clear: medical trauma is a form of childhood trauma. Like abuse or neglect, it reshapes identity, trust, and well-being for decades.
If we want to build a healthcare system that truly heals, we must change how pediatric care is delivered.
Clinicians must ask children about their feelings, not just their symptoms. They should explain procedures in language children understand and respect their bodily autonomy.
Hospitals must adopt trauma-informed care such as screening for distress, offering counseling, and prioritizing dignity alongside survival.
Policymakers must expand ACEs to recognize medical trauma.
Children’s emotional safety is just as important as their physical health. Healing the body is not enough.
Carrying It Forward
My own life has been shaped by sickness, but also by the injustice I witnessed in how children’s pain is dismissed. That’s why I promised myself I would become a medical social worker.
I know what it feels like to be a child in excruciating pain, desperate for someone to believe you. I still live in pain every single day, I wake up feeling like there are knives in my legs stabbing me all over and there is no relief. Despite the chronic illnesses I live with, and despite the anger I still feel toward medical systems that failed me, I have learned to channel that rage into purpose. My work now is about exposing the hidden trauma of childhood illness and fighting for a healthcare system that heals both the body and the mind.
Because no child should ever leave a hospital with scars deeper than the illness they arrived with.
Written by Christina Gonzalez, MSW