The Tonsil Party and a Career in Pediatric Psychology

Abstract

When I reached age 5, our family pediatrician, who made house calls, told my parents that my tonsils should come out. The deed would be done by my pediatrician and an otolaryngologist in the kitchen of my family’s apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts, saving the expense and hazards of a hospital stay during the polio epidemic of the 1950s. I was told that, ‘‘We’re going to have a tonsil party. They give you medicine to make you sleep, take them out, and when you wake up you can have all the ice cream and Popsicles you want.’’ The after-party experience was unpleasant. That set of events may well have triggered (via post-traumatic reaction formation) the origin of my subsequent interest in honest supportive communications with sick children, a generally skeptical and sarcastic personality, or both. My parents were first-generation Americans, and neither they nor any of my extended family (13 aunts and uncles, their spouses, and their children) had attended college. Although my two brothers and I occasionally helped out with my father’s plumbing business, our parents placed a high value on education and expected us to attend college. At Cambridge High and Latin School, I won science fairs and a prize for having the best science grades during my 4 years there. Chemistry was my favorite, and I won a scholarship to Boston University (BU) that allowed me to afford enrolling at BU in September 1964 as a commuter student from my parent’s home in Cambridge.