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Question:

What was your most life-altering moment?

... and why?


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: While I can't pinpoint a single moment, I can state an altering experience.

When I was a teenager, some twenty years ago, I was diagnosed with a pseudo-tumor-ceribri. Basically, it was a large air bubble centered in the middle of my forehead, seated on the optic nerves.

After about a month of extreme flu-like symptoms, severe weight loss, bouts of blindness and finally the inability to walk or talk (I could make noises but not annunciate), one doctor took my condition serious -- deciding my symptoms were not merely results of the flu -- and did a bunch of tests, including cat scans. Bingo! There it was...

Following diagnosis and treatment, I spent approximately four months learning how to walk and talk again.

It was the most humbling experience of my life.

The entire ordeal also made me question everything that I thought was real and right with the world, and with people in general.

While I was of above-average intelligence, my outward appearance-- the way I walked and talked -- gave the impression of severe mental and physical handicaps.

I will never forget how other people treated me during that time. People whom I thought were my "friends" abandoned me. Strangers mocked me with their pitying eyes as their whispers tore away at my illusion of reality. While I was not myself, trapped in a body that was not mine, I saw people for who they really were...

I've been a cynic ever since. Optimistic, but cynical none the less.

Childbirth would be my second runner up in life-altering moments... being a parent tells its own story.