John Mellencamp

You know, the fact that—and he charged my parents a dollar.

Because it was an experiment.

I was like a guinea pig.

And these other poor kids who had the same thing I did—

they all died within, you know, six months.

I remember seeing one girl that made it till she was 14 and she was in a wheelchair.

I would see her at basketball games and my parents would go, that's the other little girl that had the same operation you did.

And then she died.

So my whole life has been full of luck.

I mean, I'm not supposed to be here.

Well, they have to cut your head off, for starters.

You know, they had to cut my head and lay it open to get to my spine.

And then they would push each individual nerve ending back down into my spine, drain the fluid off.

sew it back up, and make sure that everything was working.

And they told my parents, you know, look, here he is.

He's probably going to die, get encephalitis, and his head's going to fill up with water.

We don't anticipate him living much more than six or seven months.

And I was, fuck, I think I was in fifth grade.

I didn't even know I'd had the operation.

And some kid in my class said, hey, Mellencamp, what's that big scar on the back of your neck?