I don’t know exactly what water it was, I’m guessing runoff. I know it would have been holy water and the washing would have been done by the women in the family. Why they kept this little bottle of the water is a mystery to me. I guess it is a cultural thing or maybe just a West of Ireland thing. There is stuff on…

This is a mistaken libation story.

I’m sitting in the aisle seat; a man in an airline uniform is sleeping in the window seat; an empty space separates us. The flight attendant walks by, tosses a bag of chips and a Kit Kat bar onto the middle seat. “These are yours,” she says.

I can appreciate this story - but in a slightly different way. My second kid was four when she came to me out of her mind with fear - middle of the day, with no real incident to spark her worry (from my vantage point): she was sure she has swallowed a hook. A fishing hook. (We don’t fish.) I asked a million clarifying…

The thing-I-wasn’t-supposed-to-eat in this story wasn’t that bad in the grand scheme of things, but the circumstances were awkward...

I ate bleach.

Ants, live, a whole left over sodas' worth. I was about 13. So much shrieking and vomiting ensued. 100s of ants... And it was more the sensensation of the live ants desperately trying to climb out of my through and mouth that kept my gag reflex active for hours days weeks...

To be fair you were clearly headed toward serious dehydration, heat stroke or sunstroke. Maybe all three!!! Once when I had the same level of delerium I got off a train before it stopped. I fell on the platform and it was a nasty cut/mark for awhile. I was in college and enjoyed showing people my wound from when I…

I went to a super restrictive religious elementary school, which I guess made us bored and weird in return. Anyway, it was probably 3rd or 4th grade, definitely old enough to know better, and I remember walking around the baseball diamond with my friends during recess chanting, “God made dirt so dirt don’t hurt.” We…

I ate soap. I was not a child.

When I was passed the age of knowing not to put non-food items in my mouth, I “accidentally” swallowed a penny. I say “accidentally”, because I remember pleading innocence (duh), but why did I have a penny in my mouth in the first place??? I honestly can't remember. I had to be put back in diapers on doctor’s orders,…

I ended up with $28,000 out of pocket for my first birth. Mild complications only - I had a strep infection so we had to stay an extra night and both get antibiotics. Vaginal birth, nothing special.  Just crappy as hell, pre-ACA insurance.

I was really naive with my son, and ended up a literal “for-profit” hospital and ended up having a c-section. The only reason we are trying for number two is because we moved to another country where it’s covered by national healthcare.

Even if these could be taken as exact figures, most people could never hope to afford any procedure- let alone a damned band-aid.

Seriously! I can’t imagine being in labor and trying to remember things like breathe while requesting delivery room level 2 please- you know the cheapest one!

When I gave birth, in 1996, my insurance did not cover epidurals, and they were $1,000 out of pocket. (They’re probably a hell of a lot more now.) We were on a really tight budget at the time. As it turned out, I wasn’t able to get the epidural when I finally asked for it (the anesthesiologist was busy with…

Here’s a single data point for comparison.

WTF. It would cost less to pay someone double minimum wage to drive to the nearest Target and buy a huge box of polka-dot printed band-aids than they are charging for a single one. If that isn’t enough to start a revolution I don’t know what the fuck is. 

Assessing healthcare costs shouldn’t be like buying a new car where you want to shop around for the best prices and deals. This is a waste of time and effort. 

I'm British, and the first time a friend told me how much it cost for her to have her kid in the US, I was blown away. The idea that you would have to shell out $20,oooo+ to have a baby is just insane to me, and shows how ridiculously elevated the costs of American healthcare are. No one in the UK pays ANY money…