It can be hard to recognize ourselves in old home videos. After all, we change so much: physically, psychologically, and more. But as I watched my one-year-old self in the homemade video I'd dug up from a closet in my childhood home, I truly didn’t recognize myself on the DVR screen. In fact, if not for the distinct color of my hair, I would have believed that the little girl in the video was a child who had replaced me, a completely different person.
I couldn't help but notice how happy I looked—how bold and unafraid and playful that little girl in the video was. One of my very few memories from my early childhood is greeting and introducing myself to every single stranger I saw during trips to the grocery store with my mom. Gone were any signs of social anxiety. My one-year-old self was a blooming extrovert.
But when I was around 3, I underwent a pediatric procedure known as a voiding cystourethrogram (VCUG) and everything about me changed. Everything I was became everything I wasn't.
I wasn’t happy; I was suffering from terrifying visions of men in white coats looming over me with sharp objects while I lay paralyzed on a cold medical table. I wasn’t fearless; I was in a constant state of high alert and barely ever felt any feelings of safety and security. I wasn’t playful; I was no longer interested in the things around me.
When my mom took me to the grocery store after the VCUG, I hid behind her legs the whole time. My growth was stunted and no one noticed. My childhood was stolen from me as I suffered from PTSD and dissociation without even knowing it. Of course, me not knowing was probably the purpose of the dissociation–to my brain, it was always a matter of survival.
Unacknowledged Rape: Identifying as a VCUG Survivor
When you’re a VCUG survivor and you realize what happened to you, you don’t really know what label to put on it. Medical trauma? Sexual trauma? All of the above?
When you’re a VCUG survivor, people tell you that doctors know best and would never do anything to harm you—and you believe these people, right up until the moment you read that the voiding cystourethrogram procedure is used as a proxy for child sexual abuse and is psychologically equivalent to violent rape, and that the studies proving this are decades old.
When you’re a VCUG survivor, if you say you’re a VCUG survivor, people will invalidate your trauma and doubt your pain and suffering. Even though your trauma is equal to that of sexual assault survivors, the severity of it is not understood by society. You will face disbelief in its most infuriating form.
When you’re a VCUG survivor, your relationship with your parents will suffer as you remember them as the ones who let this happen to you. You’ll watch as they simultaneously struggle to process the guilt—subconsciously or otherwise—that comes with knowing they let this unspeakable horror happen to you.
When you’re a VCUG survivor, no one will take you seriously and no one will talk about it, let alone support you through it. You’ll be left to pick up the pieces of what happened to you and the aftermath and put them together, all by yourself.
When you’re a VCUG survivor, you’re left to mourn the childhood and adolescence that was stolen from you by medical PTSD. The majority of your childhood memories will be wiped out or repressed by dissociative amnesia. Years of sleepless nights plague your childhood and your right to healthcare will be stripped away from you, despite multiple physical and mental health crises–but you feel that suffering through them and nearly dying in the process is better than going to the doctor. Anything is better than going to the doctor.
When you’re a VCUG survivor, you’re forced to mourn the person you were before everything changed without your permission and against your will. You’ll ask yourself, How could they do this to me? How could they watch me scream in pain and send me home after reassuring my parents that the VCUG procedure is painless and noninvasive, only to repeat it with the next kid?
When you’re a VCUG survivor, you have no choice but to mourn the person you could have been if the doctors had cared enough to make your well-being their top priority–the health of a vulnerable toddler dependent on the adults around her to keep her safe. You’ll dwell on the thought that another version of you exists in some parallel universe: an untraumatized, unafraid, outgoing, and optimistic person who was never forced to experience what you know to be the worst pain you’ve ever suffered.
When you’re a VCUG survivor, you’ll face the unfair challenge of coming to terms with your powerlessness and helplessness of your circumstances. You'll have to acknowledge the painful fact that you experienced feelings of powerlessness and helplessness at an age much earlier than most, and at great detriment to your early development. You’ll have no choice but to accept that there is nothing you can ever do to go back and prevent what happened to you.
But at least now maybe there’s something you can do to make sure it doesn’t happen to other kids.
Unsilenced Voices Sharing the Truth About Voiding Cystourethrogram (VCUG)
At Unsilenced, our roots can be traced back to a 2021 subreddit–a community that slowly grew to over 140 members as VCUG survivors far and wide gathered to share, rage, grieve, heal, connect, and stand in solidarity. At the time, r/VCUG_trauma was the only place where adult survivors of voiding cystourethrogram (VCUG) could find any semblance of peace and truth after the barbaric treatment, gaslighting, and invalidation they’ve endured since early childhood.
Our VCUG survivors’ community isn’t confined to U.S. borders. We recognize that the extent of VCUG trauma–not to mention its evidence-based side effects, including PTSD, vaginismus, genitourinary cancers, severe sexual trauma, and permanent psychological damage–is conveniently missing from official medical websites in the U.S. and beyond.
That’s why Unsilenced stepped in. Not only are we committed to creating a safe space for VCUG survivors and their loved ones to heal after experiencing horrific sexual and medical trauma of voiding cystourethrogram, but we’re also determined to spread the word about VCUG to ensure that every parent and caregiver knows the truth about pediatric VCUGs.
TW graphic description of VCUG
Yes this is a form of unacknowledged rape. This is how it is experienced by the child. How else would a child experience being overpowered and pinned down and fingers wandering around their genitals and the horror of being painfully and forceably penetrated against their will as they scream and fight in pain, panic and terror. Not only is this a child's experience, but their sexual assault is commited in plain sight, a spectacle that plays out in front of multiple adults, and often medical students invited to behold their violation. This is the experience inflicted on children in crucial early development stages. Unacknowledged rape.