LUCY

Moments before my life came crashing down, I had just finished painting my nails with sparkly pink polish. I was finishing up my second semester of college, and the sparkly pink matched the top I was planning on wearing to a party the next night. The color was fun, pretty, and emblematic of my first year of college. While waiting for the polish to dry, I scrolled on TikTok and came across a video from the Unsilenced Movement. The video made me uneasy, but I pushed the feeling down and scrolled away. Minutes later, I had a pit in my stomach and I was trembling. Anxiously, I paced my dorm for a bit, and then I worked up the courage to google the Unsilenced Movement.

After spending only a few minutes on their website, the realization hit me - I had gotten a VCUG as a child and had been suffering from dissociative amnesia. I texted my mom, and when she confirmed that I had undergone a VCUG when I was three, my phone fell out of my hands. Time seemed to stand still, paralyzing me. After what seemed like hours, I looked down and the pink flash of my nail polish caught my eye, and snapped me back into reality. I broke into loud sobs, my stomach heaving. The forgotten memories rushed back. Suddenly I could feel the sharp pain, like a razor blade between my legs, and the fear was so strong I could almost taste it. After I remembered, I saw the color of my polish and it just reminded me of the childhood I lost.

I wondered if I had pink sparkly nails when I had the VCUG.

Did the pink color distract me from my legs being forced open? Did the sparkles catch in the light when I was being restrained? Did my parents even hear me screaming? Did the burning hot pain between my thighs last for a while? Did I know even then that my childhood would be ruined?

After I found out about the VCUG, after the memories came back, I couldn’t even leave my dorm room for days. I was overwhelmed with terror, anger, and devastation. My mind raced through the red flags of my past, of all the unexplained struggles I had.

The first memory was my therapist telling me when I was 16 that she believes I suffered from C-PTSD that was triggered from a childhood sexual assault.

Next was all the times I threw out my lunch in elementary school, feeling so disgusted with myself I believed I didn’t deserve food. After lunch, everyone would go out for recess and I would play alone. I felt so isolated from my peers I couldn’t make friends.

Then there were all the awful nights where I couldn’t sleep on my back, when I had to barricade myself in my room to keep everyone else out, and just sobbed for hours.

I looked at the scars on my thighs from a long battle with self-harm that started when I was 12 because I simply could not cope with all the emotions I had. There were so many nights where I had to silently clean the blood off my body because I didn’t feel comfortable telling my parents I was struggling. How could they save me from myself if they couldn’t save me from the VCUG?

I remembered the recurring nightmares that haunted me, of a man in a white coat chasing me, catching me, and then assaulting me over and over and over while I was completely helpless.

When I was 15, I tried to put a tampon in for the first time. The second it touched me, I heard a man’s voice say, “you just need to relax or else this will be much worse.” I ripped out the tampon and immediately threw up. To this day, I have not been able to put one in.

I thought of the countless drives I made to the hospital and how I wanted to throw myself out of the car and into oncoming traffic because if I was dead, I wouldn’t have to go back there. I fantasized about ending my life when I was eight. I was completely incapable of taking care of myself.

Finding out I had gotten a VCUG was completing the puzzle of all the bad things in my life. It made sense.
Yes, a VCUG is a medical procedure, but to three year old me, I was raped. Brutally raped, and then gaslight. Children are told to say no when somebody is touching them in a way that makes them uncomfortable. I screamed no, and the people I had been told to trust did not listen. I was restrained, I was in excruciating pain, there was a man forcibly shoving objects up me, my parents were not with me. In my toddler mind, those doctors raped me. Those doctors took away my life. I have felt the effects of this procedure every single day. It lives within me. Nothing will ever erase the shame I’ve felt, or the time I’ve spent scrubbing my skin raw in an effort to feel clean, or the physical and emotional scars all over my body.

It’s been six months since I painted my nails sparkly pink and remembered my VCUG. Now, I’m in my sophomore year of college. I do not have a good relationship with my parents. I think I’ll always resent them for not “saving” me, like I believed they should have. I am terrified of intimacy. I refuse to see a gynecologist. I won’t get internal tests that are recommended to me. I don’t let adults touch me. Sometimes I have to run out of parties and I can’t explain to my friends why I can’t breathe. There are days when anger is all I can feel. Anger at the doctors, at my parents, at myself. It suffocates me. I reflect on how my life could have gone. What sticks with me the most is that I could have been happy. I should have been happy.

I’ve never been open about this experience. There are only two people in my life who know just how deeply this has affected me. My parents still do not know I even remember this at all. However, I am willing to share and do everything I can if it helps the movement grow. The children who still get VCUG’s are always in my thoughts and I hope from the bottom of my heart that one day VCUG’s won’t be allowed anymore.