What's the most serious illness or injury you've experienced?

[anvi]

I was born with a ventricular septal defect--a hole between the ventricles in the heart.  There was corrective surgery for it at the time, and that surgery was performed when I was 8 and I've been fine since.  But had I been born before the surgical procedure was invented, the circulatory problems the defect caused would have left me in a wheelchair by the time I was 12 and dead by about 20.  So, yay for modern medicine.