A Mother's Observations on the Tonsillectomy of her Four-Year-Old Daughter

With Comments by ANNA FREUD, LL.D. (London)

At four years and three months, Jean was in hospital for three days, accompanied by her mother, for the removal of tonsils and adenoids. This was a well-managed hospitalization and the outcome was good, but it is clear from the record that the experience was fraught with anxiety for the child.

My husband and I believed that hospitalization for tonsillectomy could be traumatic to a child of this age, but that if the mother were present to play a supportive role throughout, the risk of aftereffects could be greatly reduced. The children's physician and the ward sister (charge nurse) were specially sympathetic to our views and interested in the possibilities of nursing by the mother. We discussed the practical implications of my wish to be present during all of Jean's conscious experience.

It was eventually agreed that I should be with her until she became unconscious, and again immediately after the operation. There was initially some reluctance to allow me to be present during the early stages of returning consciousness. They then believed that she would have no awareness in that phase, and that I should therefore be spared the anxiety of witnessing an unfamiliar scene of blood and apparent distress.

Jean and I would share a cubicle in the children's ward. She would be allocated to one nurse in accordance with the practice of this ward, but in fact I would do everything for her except the technical nursing.1