The Pitt Frightens Me

Yes, I love The Pitt for its fast pace, its interconnected educational PSA structure, and its lovable goofballs, but I have found myself clutching the edge of the couch in fear and shuddering with each new episode. There is little more anxiety inducing than this stream of escalating injuries. I feel a deep fear rise from within.

When I was a kid I had a real fondness for hospitals. I once had to have grommets put in my ears to ventilate the middle ear because my hearing was a little bit off - the things that happen to the body are, sometimes, cartoonish - and I distinctly remember my excitement. The hospital had a pufferfish-themed info pack (which I think included pufferfish stickers - yay!) and I felt very taken care of and fascinated by the workings of the hospital.

Back then, hospitals seemed like magical places. This was the height of human knowledge, a locus of academic brilliance and cool machinery, and I was obsessed. The hospital is like a sort of library. Doctors and nurses were little sweeties, and all things clinical, instead of frightening me, comforted and impressed me. If anything happened that required a hospital visit, I felt relieved to be heading to and arriving at the place where you were almost certainly the safest.

I've had a few ambulance rides in my time. Once I had a random neck spasm in the bath, and two paramedics had to help me out and place me in a neck brace. The solution: a beautiful muscle relaxant that made me feel very relaxed (too relaxed) for a few days. The doctor told me: "sometimes that just happens".

I still have a great reverence for hospitals, and think they're very cool, but as an adult I steadily replaced my awe and excitement for them with straightforward discomfort and anxiety. I guess there was a sense of innocence to my love of hospitals, and now I've seen and heard too much. Instead of feeling relieved and joyful that I've made it to the best place for treatment, I've come to associate the hospital with OH GOD OH NO SOMETHING BAD IS HAPPENING. Now I gotta get outta there.

And so, when I watch The Pitt, I can't help but imagine all of those injuries and diseases happening to me. I can't help but remember that one day I categorically will die. And I think: oh. I don't want that. I actually really want to live and not be harmed.

But okay, I try to think of this sort of anxiety as a kind of test. If I watch a show like this, and I feel that white knuckle freaky feeling when something bad is happening to someone onscreen, but then after the episode is finished I can come back down to a calm baseline and accept the horrors I've seen, maybe it helps me to be better able to handle such feelings. After all, if you experience anxiety, but then you're okay, you can reinforce your ability to go through it. You have evidence that it's all gonna be okay. I'd say that sometimes I might feel a sense of heightened anxiety and worry for around ten to twenty minutes after an episode of The Pitt ends. My mind lingers on the bloody lacerations. I breathe heavily and I feel a bit shaky or tingly. But then it's over. Nothing's happening to me. And if something does happen, well, I'll go to the hospital. It's the best place to be.

Once I was in the cardiology dept. of a hospital and I heard the young doctors singing "boom, clap, the sound of my HEART, the beat goes on and on and on and on and", and I thought, God, that's beautiful. I love the hospital.