being ill

I used to believe that if you scratched Chickenpox, they would grow into trees and the roots would feed off of your blood. Thanks to my older brother and sister :)

Ro

when i was a kid i used to think i got rashes and was itchy because bees flew in my ear and were flying around under my skin.

rachel

My father had a fake eye and during the winter(in Michigan)he wore an eye patch to protect it from the cold. When I asked my mother (at age 3) why he looked like a pirate, she replied that he had a cold in his eye. From that remark and others about people having chest colds, I came to believe that you could catch a cold in any part of your body (hand colds, leg colds, etc.). I was quite old (11 or so) before I realized this was not the case.

Carol

I used to believe that when you have Diarrhoea it burns a second whole in your a*se!!

Pigeon

when I was little I hated getting needles from the dentist (still hate needles) anyway, my dentist was a children's dentist, and told me that he didn't use needles. he used an instrument that massaged the gums with anasthetic called "the Blue Tickler" and so I believed him.
until I was 16
when my older sister mocked me to no end.
I had no reason to doubt him! topical anasthetics exist!
she still makes fun of me, 7 years later.
although, the very same dentist was a bald man, and my sister, when she was a child, stared up at him raptly as he described the procedure, and instead of listening, spider-walked her fingers up and across his bald pate while singing 'the itsy bitsy spider' in soft tones. My parents still call her "inky binky" (somewhere the words got changed) and it has been 20 some years for her, so I should stop complaining

heather

My grandmother died from a subarachnoid hemorrhage when I was five. I thought she died from hemmroids. I overheard my mom talking to her sister on the phone about my grandfather's hemorrhoids and how they were worried that "he wouldn't be able to make the long drive" to come see us at Christmas and I got worried. We went Christmas shopping at the mall that afternoon, and sitting in the food court at Chik-fil-A I asked my mom what hemorrhoids were. She started laughing and I started crying because I thought my grandfather was going to die. She told me we'd talk about it later, but we never did. I figured it out on my own eventually and still get embarrassed when I think about that.

Melissa

I used to believe that your tummy could only hold a certain amount of food. Eating too much would "stretch" it and that was what a tummyache was. If you ate waaaaay to much the tummy couldn't hold anymore and puking would result. So I basically thought everyone I ever saw puke had brought it on themselves by eating more than they should have.

Anon

When I was little my grandma told me that I shouldn't play with needles (she used to sew a lot) she told me that if a needle fell in the floor and I stepped on it that the needle would get into my blood stream and the blood stream would go so fast that I would never have the chance to pull it out in time. She also said that the needle would travel through my bloodstream and get into my heart, make a hole on it and I would die in matter of minutes. I am still paranoid about this. I don't think I would ever like to prove my grandma wrong.

Laura

Since people feel their pulses to count their heartbeats, i would use this fact as a way to test if i was still alive. so one day i couldnt find my pulse, and i thought i was dying and ran to my mom crying asking her to give all my toys to my best freind.

your mom

I thought that when you vomited, you had to do it into a container and fill it up right to the top. Then someone would take it away and test it for diseases or bad food, whatever the cause of the sickness was. I thought throwing up was a really big deal, and was alarmed that when I got sick from the flu I vomited in the toilet that my mum just flushed it away before it could be tested.

Anon

When I was younger I saw a rugrats episode where Chuckie was scared to get a shot and he had a dream that his stuffed bear got one and then it exploded, and after that I got scared I would explode if I got one... I still have this irrational fear.

Sicka

i used to believe that when u got wounded on holy week especially good friday it will never heal and rice will come out from it

amyael

when i was younger, i thought there were tiny people inside of me and when i had a tummy ache, that they were playing bowling

rae

When I was 3 I had an ear infection. My mom took me to the doctor to have it checked, and he hooked me up to some sort of machine with a screen. He told me that if the car on the screen moved, my ears were magic.

I thought that I had magical powers until I was about 10.

Melissa

I used to believe that zits were chicken pox.

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 used to hold my breath when my mom took my temperature, assured it would make me appear to have a fever. After all, dead people didn't breath, and they were certainly sick. Here's the odd part: it worked.

david

I thought only 5 or 6 people in the world had AIDS. This was the late 1980s/early 1990s. Even though many people were talking about AIDS at that time, I knew it was a "rare disease". I also was aware of Ryan White, so I figured if people got famous only for having AIDS, not many people had the disease.
My school gave me some facts about AIDS which cleared my misunderstanding.

Matt Thiel

My dad had diptheria as a child in the early thirties, but having survived that major killer disease, he has never had any of the usual stuff like measles, chicken pox, mumps etc - all highly infections, and him with two children who caught the lot! Is it any surprise that I always thought that, if you survived diptheria, you would never get ill again, and was quite disappointed to discover that I had been immunised against it!!

Sue

when i was 4 years old, my mom got into a jet-ski accident and broke 3 ribs. after she had recovered a little, the doctor had prescribed painkillers to make her feel better. One day she joked that she was "all drugged up", and I had just seen a comercial about how bad drugs are. i panicked and hid all of the medicine in my whole house. i believed that medicine was illegal drugs for about 3 years, and i would refuse to take any. :D

embaressed