being ill

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.

Anon

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

Natasha

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.

Anon

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".

Anon

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.

Anon

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!!!!

Natasha

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?!'

Anon

I thought herniae only occurred in male genitalia.

Natasha

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.

Anon

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

KB

I used to believe that people got babies when they got hurt and at the hospital they would give the baby as a reward. This was because when my cousin was born I asked my parents “ How did auntie get her?” They’re reply was that my aunt was wearing high heels and she slipped, so she was taken to the hospital and they gave her a baby of her choice. So one time I was throwing up a lot and then I was taken to the hospital. When the doctor said we can go back home I asked “ But where’s my baby?”. The doctor was speechless and my parents looked at eachother embarrassed.

🐼

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

There's a scene in Mary Poppins, where Mary's uncle is floating in the air laughing, then when the others laugh, they also float. Mary and Bert describe the uncle as "contagious", so my cousin and I thought that he had some sort of disease that made him float. We called it "the float-when-you-laugh disease".

Anon

At school, my swim teacher told me to run to the changing rooms, dry myself and get changed as quickly as possible or else "a cold might catch me."

I think it was a cross between the myth that being cold or wet makes you catch a cold, plus her desire to make me not dawdle. I was always skeptical but I never outright disbelieved it until later.

She'd describe said "cold" as being a huge, slimy green monster and when it caught you, you'd sneeze once, then fall sick with a cold.

At one point, I sneezed and she jokingly said, "That cold has caught you!". It was actually hayfever, but I freaked out.

She'd sometimes state that she could see the "cold" and I was wondering why I couldn't.

When I told her that I'd never been assaulted by a green monster, she said that the cold must be a very slow runner or I was a very fast runner.

At one point, I was scared because I thought I had slime on me and that "the cold" had caught me, but it turned out to only be a snail.

Anon

I thought a stomach ache was a stomach egg

Catherine