Warning! This post is not for the faint at heart!
At best, it will show you how far pediatric surgery has advanced since the 1950s. At worst, it will make you sick to think of the trauma endured by tens of thousands of babies before 1986.
What Happened in 1986?
1986 was the year the Academy of Pediatric Surgeons changed their infant surgery protacol. Finally, they added pain medication to the paralytic drugs administered to infants going into surgery.
Yes, you read that correctly. Before 1986, babies going into surgery were given a paralytic drug so they would hold still. But they weren’t given pain medication.
Why Not?
Before 1986, the standard belief was that babies didn’t feel pain like adults do. My husband and I know this was their belief because we heard it often from the neonatal intensive care doctors and nurses in 1982. During Allen’s recovery, we knew he received no pain meds. Still, we assumed they’d been administered during surgery. That assumption was wrong.
How About Now?
These days, if your infant or child has surgery, pain medication is in the mix. But there are three decades worth of babies born in the 1950s through 1986 who were deeply traumatized during surgery. Many of them suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and their lives are in shambles. Our son avoided a ruined life, thanks to the treatment he received at Intensive Trauma Therapy Institute in Morgantown, WV. One of the therapists at the clinic, Dr. Louis Tinnin, recently started a blog about Infant Surgery Without Anesthesia. You can read what he has to say at this link.
What About Those Babies?
Wendy, now a grown woman, was one of those babies. She writes about her struggle to overcome trauma at My Incision Blog. A poet and a painter, she faces her past with creativity and emotion. You might find it enlightening.
If you or someone you know went through infant surgery during the decades of the 50s, 60s, 70s, and early 80s, please pass this information on to them. A life that began with searing pain doesn’t need to be consumed by it. Help is available. I’d be glad to talk to you more about it, so leave a comment if you have questions.
Jolene
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23 Responses
WOW! I had heard about this happening years ago, but had NO idea it continued into the 80′s. It makes my heart hurt just thinking about that. Can’t even imagine. Thanks for sharing, as always.
Recovery Is Possible
Permanent cure of the posttraumatic symptoms from pain in infancy is possible. The treatment is intense but short, usually requiring a week. It does not require reliving of the trauma. It does require thorough study of the nonverbal experience when the infant lapsed into primitive survival instincts and finally with innate resiliency survived a near-death experience. The therapeutic study is promoted by guided imagery followed by graphic narrative trauma processing and externalized dialogue with dissociated inner parts. This treatment is done by a team of expert therapists, all devoted to the goal of full recovery, not simply amelioration of symptoms. For more information see http://www.traumatherapy.us
Hard to believe, isn’t it Christine? Thankfully, times have changed. I’m so glad Billy didn’t have to endure surgery without pain meds.
Jolene
Louis,
Thank you for describing ITT’s treatment in more detail. This wonderful man is one of the therapists who worked with our son during his week of outpatient treatment at ITT. Thanks to Dr. Tinnin and the rest of the therapists, our son has made a full recovery. We are indebted to them for restoring our son’s life.
Jolene
Truly thankful that times have changed. Surgery back in those days was very different. I know as I had many, many surgeries on my ears as a young child that left me very traumatized into adulthood. The nursing staff back then was very different and there truly was not as much compassion then as there is now. However even nowadays with pain meds there are still residual effects from all the surgeries which we live with in our son Brandon and all his surgeries.
Hi Lori,
There’s no doubt that invasive medical procedures and surgeries still traumatize children. An entire chapter in Different Dream Parenting is devoted to the topic. Have you looked at the books by Peter Levine and Maggie Kline? They give parents step by step instructions for exercises to help resolve trauma in kids.
Jolene
Thanks for bringing this information to us – I clicked over from my site, http://www.supportforspecialneeds.com. My son benefited from pain meds during multiple surgeries and he is still traumatized. About a year ago I learned from him that he remembers being awake during a surgery. One that had a very painful recovery.
It is no wonder he was suicidal, depressed, disconnected. With proper mental health treatment (a team of people) he’s recovering but I feel like he always will be.
Thanks also for linking to Wendy’s site.
Julia,
You’re welcome. I highly encourage you to get in touch with the people at ITT. They can help your son. If you only knew how completely different our son is since treatment you would RUN to the clinic that treated him. The PTSD is still there, but he understands it and knows what to do to avoid being dragged down by it. The people at http://www.traumatherapy.us are amazing.
Jolene
I could not imagine putting my little girl through surgery (over a dozen so far, with another heart surgery coming up this year) without pain medication. My heart goes out to those now dealing with PTSD.
Thank you, Jolene, for bringing this issue to people’s attention, and thank you for mentioning my story and my blog on your post. I have tears in my eyes as I take in Paul’s compassionate wishes for those of us who have suffered so deeply from infant surgery without anesthesia. I am grateful to have survived and been able to heal to a great extent, and I am fortunate to be able to educate or, at least, inform others and serve, hopefully, as a role model of some kind. Your post affirms my work and gives me the courage and energy to keep going. Additionally, I am so happy for your son and just may find my way to Dr. Tinnin’s clinic yet.
Oh Wendy, I was happy to mention your story. The healing you have accomplished is amazing. And I hope you do get to ITT so they can help you with the rest of your healing. If they say they can help, don’t walk. RUN to the clinic. To have your life back in a week. What a blessing!
Jolene
In 1945 I was circumcised without anesthesia. This procedure is so common that it usually isn’t even thought of as surgery, let alone serious surgery. After more than 30 years of various kinds of therapies to deal with emotional problems, I began to re-experience my circumcision. There was no coaching. In fact, I’d scarcely ever thought about circumcision, but the buried memory came back once I was in the right kind of therapeutic setting. I hope the Intensive Trauma Therapy Institute is including this particular trauma in its list of infant surgeries that have lasting impact on American males. There are millions of us, though there is little cultural acknowledgment of the horror of this particular surgery.
Robert,
I’m sorry it took me so long to reply to your comment. Yes, ITT does include circumcision on its list of traumatizing infant surgeries. Any infant surgery is included on the list, and they work with many, many clients concerning that issue. If you feel you have lingering issues, I urge you to contact ITT. They can make a huge difference in your life.
Jolene
Jolene,
Thank you so much for your message. I’m very glad to hear that ITT does include circumcision on its list of traumatizing infant surgeries. Do I have lingering issues? Let me count the ways . . . . Well, I’m thinking about this. My suspicion is that the problem is so little recognized or understood that there are millions of men with “lingering issues” who simply have never made the connection to an infant surgery. I’m doing my bit to raise awareness. Thank you very much for your response! Robert
You’re welcome, Robert. Best wishes to you.
Jolene
I’m sorry, but I just have to call bogus on this. Going through my mom’s vag had to have been painful, since my whole body including my head got completely smooshed, but you don’t see me crying in a corner about it now as an adult. And I’m sorry, but no, you don’t remember going through a surgery when you were 8 days old. You can’t even properly process what sight and sound until you’re several MONTHS old, let alone sense everything perfectly and then place it into memory perfectly when you’re less than a month old.
Besides, why don’t you mention anything about the negative side effects of giving extremely potent and addictive medication that has nervous system effects (sometimes permanent even for an adult) to a newborn?
To be brutally honest, there are people out there with real problems, and you are not one of them. Rape, murder, physical abuse, starvation, disease, acts of nature, robbery, racism, genocide – millions of people around our planet are plagued with these things. They’d be happy if all they could say they’ve been through is a painful surgery before they could even remember it.
And I would just like to clarify that I don’t condone NOT giving pain medications to infants. I just was making the point that we should study how these medications interact with the nervous systems of newborns, because their nervous systems are drastically different than our own. Damage, even temporary damage, to a baby’s nerves can result in extremely dramatic complications later on. Even if you just cover up the eye of an infant for a few months (no damage at all!), the eyesight in that eye will be permanently damaged for the rest of that baby’s life! So the effects of pain medications in babies needs to be talked about and established before you talk about the immorality of not administering it to babies for pain.
Secondly, even assuming that there are no negative side effects (which I’m sure isn’t true), babies simply won’t remember. What CAN you remember if the facilities aren’t even in place yet for you to process the incoming signals to your brain from your eyes or your ears? In other words, what is your memory if not sight memory, or sound memory, or memory from some other sense? If those senses aren’t developed yet, you just can’t have memory. What would the memory be OF?
I don’t like to see any creature, human, animal, adult, or baby in unnecessary pain, but I think there’s a lot more to the story than what you say. And I’m not convinced that going through a painful procedure without anesthesia is going to cause more long-term trauma than psychological, physical, or sexual abuse. I apologize for being blunt earlier, but I get angry when time is wasted on an issue like this when the need is so great for people to be attentive to other, much more serious problems.
Dear A. Hill,
Thank you for responding to this post. Until three years ago, I would have responded as you do to the idea of adults remembering something as infants. But three years ago this week, my son was treated for PTSD caused by invasive medical surgery (without anesthetic as it occurred in 1982, four years before the Academy of Pediatric Surgeons changed that protocol) at birth and throughout his first three years, and the treatment changed his life.
Rather than respond to everything in both your comments, I will make just a few points. First, I am thankful for my son’s surgery in 1982, even though it was done without anesthetic. But now newborns are given anesthetics during surgery. Second, newborns do remember pain and carry it with them, just as they remember and carry with them the loving touch of their parents and the sense of security it creates. If not, why bother holding babies, talking to them, snuggling them if they have no memories? Third, those memories of pain are “remembered” not as scenes and events, but as an ever-present sense of dread or doom. Finally, you mentioned real problems like rape, starvation, physical abuse and such. I agree they are very important. What would happen if newborns were subjected to them? If they can’t remember, it doesn’t really matter, does it? And yet, if your newborn faced such circumstances, my guess is that you would try to shield him from it. Why is that?
If you would like to discuss the topic further, please contact me via my personal email rather than through the comment section of this website. I think our discussion would be much more productive on a one-to-one basis.
Jolene
Dear A. Hill,
Please see my response to your second comment. It covers the points you bring up in both of yours.
Jolene
Oh wow! I never knew this. It makes me wonder. I was born in ’82 and the next year I had both my tonsils & my adenoids taken out. I’ll have to ask my mom if I was ever given pain meds. I’m so thankful that we now administer pain medications, or my son would definatly be hurting. He’s had numerous surgeries already, before the age of 3.
Hi Sharla,
I’m not sure what to tell you. At some age, they do start administering pain meds to children, so you may have had them. Your mom may not know for sure, but it’s worth asking.
Jolene
I had knee surgery at 18 months of age in 1953. I have led a productive life but have experienced much resentment anger and frustration throughout. I have only recently become aware of the lack of anesthesia during my operation. This could also explain why they would not let my mother see me for days. I suspect the paralytic drugs would have made me unresponsive or failing that I would have been in intense pain. My mother told me that I went to the hospital a normal loving baby but left screaming and inconsolable and that I remained that way. I would not allow hugging and disliked touching of any kind. I am fortunate to have been able to discover and fit the pieces of my puzzle together. I continue to explore and improve my situation. Thank you for this opportunity to share.
Craig,
Thank you for leaving your comment. How good to hear of the healing you’ve experienced, Craig. My prayers go with you for more healing and wholeness in the future.
Jolene