being ill

At the age of 8, I saw a TV show that talked about the link between those really big electricity pylons and cancer.
Every time we drove underneath them, I believed that holding my breath would prevent me 'catching' cancer.
In my mid-teens I realised I was still holding my breath everytime I went underneath them.

Lumpen

I used to believe that if you got a splinter after awhile your whole body would turn into wood.

Anon

When I was 4 or 5 I herd my older sister talking about the black plauge and herd it started with fleas. So for weeks I would ask my mother if different animals that I saw got fleas (like monkies or something) she would say yes and I would fear any animal that could get fleas because I didn't want the plauge

Devon Anderson

When I was like four, I always got sick and when my Mom wanted me to take my medicine, she used to say things like it will help my bloodsells and my stomach and different body parts and she would always say that my blood cells were at war with germs and it sounded like they were alive how she explained it so I used to belive my insides were alive and the food in my belly would talk to eachother and when I took medicine or ate something healthy, I would look down at my stomach cheering for my blood cells!

Dessy

I was a hypochondriac when I was a child. I was always convinced that I had some kind of health problem, and would frequently demand that my mother do something about my imaginary ailments.

When I was around 9, whenever I came to my mother complaining of a stomachache, she would give me some dark green "miracle medicine," which she said had been discovered by natives in the rainforest. It always worked! I would take it, lie down and feel better in minutes. I even remember telling her that I wanted to write a thank-you letter to the village where the medicine was discovered.

I later found out that this "medicine" was water and green food coloring.

Kim

I used to believe that if you slept with a bandaid on you would die, since obviously to leave one on for more than a few hours meant you were hurt REALLY bad. I remember forgetting to take one off one night and being shocked that morning when I woke up alive.

Jenny

Well into adulthood I thought that a local anesthetic meant one from the area near the hospital..

D'sparil

I used to beleive that all pains were headaches. So for example, I had headaches in my stomach, legs and arms.

James

i used to believe that i could get a yeast infection by eating raw dough!

Anon

I was told that if you took medicine when you weren't really ill it would make you ill. I used to believe that the medicine would somehow know which illness you were faking and give you that illness. For example if you pretended to have a sore throat and took medicine for that, it would give you a sore throat.

Neil Gilbraith

My little brother used to believe that he couldn't touch anything pink, or it would cause an incurable rash where it touched. The only way to prevent the rash would be to "wipe off" the pink with blue ASAP.

Melissa

I remember telling my friends that a heart attack meant that your heart exploded open, and the doctors had to stitch it shut again so it would work.

Mojo!

When I was too young to understand what cancer was my mum told me that my granddad had died because he had something growing inside him that shouldn't be there. I always pictured him laying in a hospital bed with a tree sprouting out of his mouth.

Louisa

I used to believe that a yeast infection was something you could get from eating "bad" bread.

Lauren

Since my brother always claimed he had the School Flu to get out of school, I assumed the School Flu was a real disease.

School Flu

One time I was sleeping over my friend’s house and I didn’t feel good. I didn’t tell her mom because I was afraid that she would take my temperature rectally because that’s how my mom always did it. When my mom took me home next morning I went right into bed and I had 105.5! When I told my friend she said that her mom had switched her to an ear thermometer!

Abby

When I was young I used to believe for some reason that being asthmatic meant you were born with no lungs.

Anon

My Dad served in WW1, and was badly injured. One of his minor problems was his baby finger on his left hand which had not been set, when broken, and was like a corkscrew. As a child I would ask, time and time again, what happened to his finger. He would say "the Germans did it" I heard "the germs did it" and was very careful to scrub myself so no germs could get to me.

Vera

I used to believe that an amputated limb would grow back. I remember thinking that it must be a very slow process when I overheard that a friend of my parents who only had one foot had lost it several years before.

Flo

When i was small i use to think that if anyone cut you and you bled and couldn't make it stop, then you would bleed to death until your body turned flat... i later realized human beings had bones and they would never turn flat even if they were to bleed to death.

W3ndi