Perspective requested: Did I humiliate my family that day?

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Just today, I had an unpleasant hospital experience. I went for a CT scan, to get a spine problem checked out. But I just couldn't to lie still for longer than a minute or two---the machine pressing into my back felt too goddamn painful! After some failed attempts on the workers' part to relax me, with the nurses giving me a pep talk and the CT techs rubbing my shoulders a little, the procedure was terminated. I was promptly referred to see a doctor in a pain management clinic, and rescheduled for a new scan after that clinic appointment. No muss, no fuss; no harm, no foul. Everything was taken in stride, and treated no differently than me slipping and falling in the CT scan room.

This brought back a memory...

When I was 8 or 9, I did a similar procedure. It was either another CT scan or a fluoroscopy. * I also couldn't lie still, although for a different reason. I had no spine problems, but the machine was just freaking uncomfortable! (Medical technology, ESPECIALLY the pediatric kind, was much more crude in 1990 than in 2023.) When the workers realized the procedure was a no-go, they stopped it, after they took mercy on me. But my parents did not!

For the entire 45-minute ride home, they screamed at me with what seemed like bloodthirsty rage in their voices and facial expressions. They said things like...
"You have no idea how badly you humiliated us today! How are we going to show our faces here, or at any other hospital, when people find out our son is a coward?! ** We took you to a doctor to help you get better, but you were too scared! You're an embarrassment to the entire family!" And so on, and so on, nonstop for 45 minutes in the car, and then some more at home.

I'm sure I made my parents waste an insurance copayment and time off work from rescheduling the procedure, although they didn't say anything about it while berating me; me being a "coward" was their highest priority.

As my punishment, I wasn't allowed to watch TV that day and the weekend after, which included my Saturday morning cartoons. (The appointment was on a Friday.) And my reward trip to the city zoo was obviously canceled.

So... Did I actually humiliate my family that day? Or was there something else at play there?

P.S.:
It'll be funny at this point if my parents' typical embarrassing things years later, like my mom combing my hair or my dad brushing sand off my jeans, in front of my entire 6th-grade class , were acts of planned retaliation, rather than on-the-spot negligence.

_________
* X-ray is to photo as fluoroscopy is to movie.
** In my parents' mindset, inability to tolerate physical pain was the same as cowardliness.

They severely over-reacted.

Not that it would excuse their behaviour towards you on that day, but I wonder what their childhood experiences were like and how often they were shown compassion and understanding vs. shame, guilt and cruelty.

That said, they'd need to be incredibly petty to be consciously motivated by that event years later to plan actions to intentionally humiliate you, especially when those actions amount to pretty typical s**t parents do without considering how it will embarrass their kids.

I think if they were being malicious years later, they'd aim for something more obviously humiliating, instead of something that's a pretty typical experience for kids between middle school and high school.

This appears to be a classic case of parents (and to a lesser extent, pediatricians) weaponizing medical procedures against kids for use as disciplinary/expectation measures. Example: "extracting bravery" out of their child by ignoring his physical pain. While this is falling into disuse, it's still around, and was quite common back in 1990. Plus, the much-cruder pediatric medicine even today, compared to adult medicine, enables such weaponization. Not to mention, today, I have 100% power to reject any procedure I find too uncomfortable. While in 1990, I was under the "mercy" of my parents "wanting what's best for me".

This was mostly tongue-in-cheek... mostly. Still, it's funny how there's a slightly visible "now he knows how we felt!" comeuppance factor here.

I have to ask, why was the CT uncomfortable this time?

I've had lots of CT and MRI and although the MRI can be claustrophobic for some people, it's not uncomfortable on my back. I know you said you have a spine problem so was the discomfort from lying on your back? How did the CT touch you? I'm just a bit confused about the procedure you had.

When my daughter was little they needed a special scan where she had to be crying to open her lungs. She wasn't crying so they strapped her down and told me to say I was going home and leaving her there, so she would cry. It worked very well but I was just in the room out of eyesight. I always thought that would traumatise her but she doesn't remember it, although she was only about 5 max, when it happened.

It was the pressure on my back; the machine dug into painful points. I don't have claustrophobia, or ever did. In fact, I had an MRI at age 12, and tolerated it like a US Marine, even with the tunnel-shaped MRI's in 1994 being much more closed-in than the donut-shaped CT scans today. Even though the MRI machine I was in was gray and a bit ominous-looking, somehow, I didn't really care. (Yesterday's CT scan machine was a boring beige.) Then again, those MRI techs were not pediatricians, and treated me with utmost dignity. My whole family praised me for "bravery" and "maturity" that day.

Fingers crossed, I trust the pain management clinic I'm scheduled to see to do something about my current problem.

"Severely overreacted" is right.

Looking back on that day's events, I can't help but recall a large number of words "we", "us", and "our son" in my parents' screaming. It smacks of narcissism and possessiveness. In other words, they seemed more concerned about my "cowardice's" effect on them and their public image, rather than on my quality of life: that is, "What will people think!?", rather than how I might put myself in harm's way as an adult by avoiding medical care due to my fears. Also that they saw me as a possession who exists to make them look good---"Look how brave our son is! He's in pain and doesn't complain!"---rather than as a person in my own right.

Funny how I'm now NOT avoiding medical care today. If I feel like I need something done, I just go. If the procedure is tolerable, I tough it out; if not, I speak up. And the quality of care I get from my doctors today is extremely higher than anything my pediatric doctors gave. And when I failed to tolerate this particular procedure, they handled it with utmost dignity and nonchalance. (That said, going to one my city's best doctors, rather than to butchers trying to pass as pediatricians, does help.)

My dad was inclined to react as your parents did, but I've honestly never considered such reactions appropriate. Such reactions speak to a person's own insecurity. My dad was intensely insecure. People like that take it as a failure anytime they present as anything less than picture perfect to the world. They have the false impression that everyone else is just like them, obsessed over image and critical of anyone who fails in public. Some people are, sure, but what a stressful and unhappy way to live.

So much better to evolve to the point of not caring. I mean, I try to present nicely to the world because I'm a considerate person; I've been trained to have manners and posture, etc; and I prefer to make life easy and pleasant for others around me if I can; but I'm not embarrassed to admit that I'm not perfect. No one is perfect.

I had a full panic attack when I had to do an MRI once. Not initially, but when they told me I had to do it again. Sigh. I'm not embarrassed. I'm human.

That your parents felt humiliated is on them, not you.

That's an interesting "perspective"---just as I requested. I'm 100% sure at this point my parents sincerely believed that everyone but them had a "brave child". And they were fully willing to trample on skulls to get "theirs". As they screamed bloody murder at me, they mentioned a younger boy they saw smiling in the waiting room. While for all they knew, that boy might have had more illegal fentanyl in his body than a homeless druggie in Portland, OR.

Funny how I'm eligible for a fully legal fentanyl prescription today. The pain management clinic just needs to determine the safe delivery method and dose. My appointment with them is needed to get my CT scans done.

As for my own reaction, it wasn't panic, it was pain. (While I wouldn't know first hand, not being claustrophobic, I'd guess it's harder to panic in a simple donut than in a tunnel.) And I didn't care, either. I couldn't go through the CT scan procedure, and that was that. The techs didn't judge me, let alone care. It was all in a day's work for them. While I found myself thinking: "THANKS GOD my stupid family isn't here to see this!", despite me being 39 now.