Part of it, I think, is that we try to imagine ourselves going through such an ordeal, and most of us can't see how we could make it. But the ordeal itself changes you, so that you're not the person coming out that you were going in. You become someone who can survive it.

We do a fund-raiser dance marathon at the university here every year, called Thon, where people dance for 48 hours straight. One of the pieces of advice for the dancers' minders is, "When they start talking about things that aren't there, don't disagree with them." Crazy...and yet people compete for the honor of participating.