So I asked family, friends, etc. to tell me about a time that they got hurt or sick. Not just your normal illness or injury, though: I'm talking about an ailment that made them realize that they were made of meat and bones — just like the Visible Man model. Some people balked, saying that they didn't have a story. That's a lie…

Everybody's got at least one story to tell. I actually pity the person who whisks through life without a ding, a dent or a fevered hallucination. In my book, they really haven't lived and they certainly don't have the bragging rights that the rest of us have. If we survive it, each injury or illness gives us a great story to tell. These stories make for great drinking banter. Try it. Just ask your friends, "where do you have pencil lead in your body?" or "how did you break your leg?" You'll get hours of enjoyment laughing at your own frailty.

The stories below are anonymous, but you can be assured that you and your friends have experienced what has been detailed below. No matter who we are, we all are made out of the same hodge-podge of muscles, bones, fat and general goo.

I'll start by telling my story...

One morning I woke up to discover that I couldn't move the left side of my face. I couldn't close my left eye. I couldn't move my cheeks without using my hand. I couldn't whistle. When I tried to drink a bottle of Dr. Pepper, the left side of my mouth couldn't seal around the bottle and soda sprayed out of my mouth. I went to Student Health Services to see if I had had a stroke. I was really freaking out. They checked me out and really didn't know what was wrong. I was referred to a neurologist who immediately identified my condition as Bell's Palsy. Supposedly some inflamed tissues behind my ear were pinching a nerve that controls the motor control of the left side of my face. I was given a massive amount of steroids and a warning _ if I didn't massage my face every day, the muscles could atrophy and my face could stay that way. I also had to wear an eye patch at night to keep my left eye closed. Luckily, it cleared up in about a month, although my left eyelid still closes a little slower than my right.

I was in the Navy in the late 80's, stationed on a frigate out of Newport, RI. In 1988, we were involved in a small collision with a cargo ship. No one was hurt, but we had to be towed into Charleston, SC for repairs. After we had been in port for a few days, I was stricken with a strange malady. I was incredibly weak, dehydrated, light-headed, and had the worst case of diarrhea I've ever experienced. I saw the hospital corpsman and he gave me aspirin, but other than that I could barely move from my bunk. Because the crew was so busy working on the ship, my absence wasn't noticed for a couple of days. When one of my friends came by and saw the condition I was in, he rushed me to the hospital on base. I was in the hospital for four days. When they admitted me, I was running a fever around 104 and was very dehydrated. Because of the diarrhea, they had to feed me through an IV. The first night my temperature went up to 105 and the nurses had to drag me into an ice cold shower to get my temperature down. After a few days my temperature was back to normal, the diarrhea was gone and I was eating regular food again. The doctors were never clear about what it was I had except that they thought it was some kind of intestinal virus. The strange thing is that up until that point in my life I had always been unusually healthy. I never got sick except for maybe a brief cold each fall and spring. Although I was not scared when it was going on, after it was over with I realized that I was mortal too and that someday I would get sick from something I might not recover from.

You want gruesome? Aged 16, mowing a lawn at a small hotel up in Black Mountain. It's a big lawn and an old gas-powered walking mower. Little rubber guard on the back had fallen off long ago, so the occasional rock, piece of bark, etc. would come whizzing back at you from time to time. No biggie. I'm pretty sure it was July because some of the apples had starting falling off the trees. Instant fresh apple sauce, straight from the mower. My own stupidity, of course. I mow on a slight embankment. Zip over an apple. Applesauce shoots out right beneath my right foot. Slip. I pull my foot back towards me as I'm falling, but not quite fast enough, as it slides through where that little rubber guard would have been. I feel/hear the blade rip through my shoe (ya think a little leather's gonna stop a whirling blade? get real). No pain as I yank my foot back. Cool, thinks I, it passed between my toes. Blood everywhere. Hey, at least the endorphins are flowing. I feel amazingly lucid. I also feel like my pain (and relieving it) takes precedence over everything else. I'm told I swore a blue streak (it was quite the scandal among the elderly guests for about a week). I hightail it (well as high a tail as one can muster with blood gushing from one's right foot) into the hotel kitchen. "I need to go to the emergency room," I tell the cook. "Why?" says the cook. Not quite the response I was looking for, plus endorphins and patience don't go together. Another full-volume blue streak (no biggie to the cook) and I'm off to the front desk. Spreading blood everywhere I go. There I got some attention. So after all that .... a 5% permanent disability of the right great toe. Or so the insurance company said. The blade sliced about an inch deep into my toe, lengthwise. Everything grew back together, kinda. Now, I got a heart-shaped big toe. The chicks dig it though.

On the morning of my fifth grade spelling bee I awoke to find something was protruding into my chin. It turned out it was my knee. Somehow during the course of sleep, I had jacked my leg up to my head while I was sleeping on my stomach. Putting the leg in this position pinched the femoral artery shut, so my leg went to sleep in a big way. It must've been hiked up like that for a while, because I really struggled to sit up as I pushed the dead of my leg around. I knew something was really wrong_there wasn't even any tingling sensation, just a big piece of dead meat. I sat on the edge of the bed for a second and tried to stand up. My numb leg was completely useless and it immediately gave way, sending me crashing to the floor. Of course, panic set in by this point as I was writhing on the floor, wrestling with this dead appendage and trying desperately to upright myself. Needless to say, I was screaming for my parents the entire time, who had heard my tremendous thud from the other end of the house. There wasn't much I could do until the blood returned to my leg. After about an hour's worth of painful tingling, I was finally able to walk again, at which point I went to school and was soundly defeated in the third round of the school spelling bee...

I was a little skate rat when I was a teen. Practically every day of the week I could be found somewhere in my hometown of Elizabethton, Tennessee with skateboard under foot. My friends and I would cart along ramps, sliders and other homemade objects so we could do our little skateboard tricks. On one particular weekend, I happened to be performing one particular stunt called a "hand plant"—one skates up a ramp, grabs the skateboard with one hand, puts the other hand on the top of the ramp, swings around and comes back down the ramp. I happened to be performing the "fakie" version of said stunt, during which the same steps are taken with the exception of the skateboarder returning to the ramp backwards instead of forwards. Due to some miscalculation on my part, BAM!, my wheels catch the top of the ramp. Being a human with all the natural survival instincts that come along with that title, I attempt to break my fall with my hands. What I probably should have emphasized earlier is that these ramps often were shoddy and thrown together with whatever wood that we could cull from our backyards and poorly-guarded construction sites. Anyway, as my hands make contact with the surface of said ramp, I feel a slight sting. Of course, I'm still in protect-your-body mode and don't really notice said sting due to the feeling of my 165-pound body slamming against the ground. However, once I figure out I've not splattered myself, I realize that stinging feeling was actually a large chunk of wood forcing itself through my hand. It entered on the pinky side of my hand just below said finger and broke off flush with my flesh. It never really exited my hand, but I could see it poking out from the center of my palm. It was about ¼ inch in diameter and several inches long. I immediate fell into panic mode. I calmly asked my friend David for his Swiss Army knife so that I might casually remove said tree from my hand. David assures me this is probably not the best thing to do and rushes me to the hospital, conveniently located ½ mile away. During this short trek down the street, my adrenaline had started to wear off. I could now feel this tree shooting through my hand, and I wasn't very happy about the whole thing. Many novocaine shots and stitches later, I was taken back to my car and driven home. To this day I cannot straighten my pinky completely, but I have only a slight scar and a long story to tell.

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