body functions: being ill

One day — must’ve been around 3rd grade — I was home alone because my mom was at work so I decided to go into my parents’ bedroom and take my temperature on my own. I was very proud of myself as I lay there waiting for it to beep. When i pulled it out of my butt it looked like it said 104. I called my mom at work in a panic and expected her to do the usual gasp that she did when she saw I had temperature. I told her my temperature, and she asked if there was a period between the second 0 and the 4. She then me that I had 100.4 and not 104!!

I didn’t do that my own for a long while after that!

I've been thinking for all my life that ADHD is just an excuse for misbehaving.

When I was about 3 my mother once told me I would catch cold from the draught at the window. I misheard and thought she said "giraffe" not "draught"
I believed that people caught colds from giraffes breathing down on them. I remember explaining this to other children in school.

I used to think saying "six" would make you sick

I used to believe that "ambulatory" meant "sick". After all, ambulances are for sick people, right? I was confused when there was a Disney ride that said "must be ambulatory" because why would you need to be sick to go on a ride?

I used to think that autism was some sort of childhood disease.

I used to think that when people had chemotherapy, they had to make a salon appointment and they would wash the person's hair with a strong and toxic shampoo and conditioner so it would blast off their head and leave them bald. At least that's less gross than all the blood stuff in hospital.

I used to think that the word blurb was a noise that people made when being sick. Bluuuggghhh.

I used to think that if a baby was born with an ear infection, it's mother would hold it upside down and tickle it, like some bizarre way of curing it.

I thought "evacuate" meant "to vomit" because in the sequel to 'Nanny McPhee' (called Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang), a character throws up and another character refers to it as an "evacuation".

I used to believe those gel capsule pills were actually made out of plastic and that taking them was pointless because you would poop the pills out whole without them ever opening in your stomach to let the medicine out.

I used to think Cancer Research was just people learning about the disease and thought all the money would go to doctors and medical students because they would be using expensive computers and would have to pay a big internet bill for all the different websites they visited!!!!

In primary school, I thought my teacher was diabetic, because she was testing a pen on her finger, and the red ink looked like blood.
I thought 'how can she be allowed to do that when she's working, in front of us kids?!'

I thought herniae only occurred in male genitalia.

I used to believe that Lupus (the auto-immune disease) was actually a werewolf disease. I thought this because I saw an internet meme when I was 12 about Dr. House. One of the other doctors suggested that the patient might have Lupus, and Dr. House scoffs at the ridiculous idea and says it is not Lupus. I was a smart kid, and knew that Lupus meant wolf in Latin. So from that meme, I knew three things about Lupus:
1. It’s a disease.
2. It was so ridiculous that Dr. House scoffed at the idea of a patient having it.
3. It meant “wolf”.
Therefore, Lupus must be a werewolf disease. I thought it was a made-up disease, like a zombie virus, so when I heard of someone actually having Lupus in real life (around age 17), I thought it was a joke before realizing that Lupus must be something different than what I thought it was.

I used to believe everything mostly mental illness is when you are very ill and might die! And I am mentally ill myself!