What might you be dead of now? [Archive] - Straight Dope Message Board

Sophistry and Illusion

06-12-2005, 02:28 AM

...if it were not for modern medical technology?

While recently recovering from typhoid fever (!) acquired in the Middle East, I was reading up on my illness and learned from Wikipedia that if not treated by antibiotics, typhoid fever is fatal in between 10 and 30% of cases. This got me to wondering, as I have before, whether I would have lived to my current ripe old age of 33 were it not for modern medical technology. So here's the question:

If it were not for modern medical and pharmaceutical technology, what might you be dead of by now?

Omit diseases you might have gotten were it not for modern vaccines. I am interested in ailments you actually have suffered from (or suffer from now) which would have had a decent shot at causing you to shuffle off your mortal coil, depart from this vale of tears, kick the bucket, or, in short, die. For me:

asthma: I was hospitalized several times as a kid, and it might have been curtains for me were it not for adrenaline injections (or whatever the heck it is they shoot you up with when you are having a severe attack)
typhoid fever

inkleberry

06-12-2005, 02:37 AM

Aquired agranulocytosis (http://health.yahoo.com/ency/healthwise/nord209) .

Bee stings (I am fatally allergic and require an epi pen).

devilsknew

06-12-2005, 02:55 AM

Certainly, late onset (22) chicken pox.

jastu

06-12-2005, 04:31 AM

How modern are we talking about here? I've had a few close calls over the years; chronic tonsillitis requiring tonsillectomy, emergency appendicectomy, one particularly prolonged bout of pneumonia and now kidney failure. All would have resulted in death without medical intervention. I'm definitely living on borrowed time.

Large Marge

06-12-2005, 04:34 AM

An ectopic pregnancy.

I would have bled to death internally.

Noone Special

06-12-2005, 04:36 AM

Pneumonia, twice. In both cases temp. shot up well over 40 (C) -- w/o antibiotics one of the two bouts would have probably been the last...

Sophistry and Illusion

06-12-2005, 05:03 AM

How modern are we talking about here?
I vaguely had in mind 20th-century medical advances.

flodnak

06-12-2005, 05:15 AM

If my mother is not exagerrating - and mind you, she has been known to exagerrate - I was in deep doo-doo already at the tender age of 4 months, when I contracted some sort of gastro-intestinal virus and was extremely dehydrated. Mind you, dehydration can be treated with a relatively low-tech solution of water, sugar, and salt in the correct proportions, but a century ago I'd've been dead just because nobody knew that.

If I survived that, I'm pretty sure hyperemesis gravidarum (http://www.hyperemesis.org.uk/) would have wiped me out by now. Basically, when I'm pregnant, I throw up. A lot. Without contraceptives to limit pregnancies, and anti-emetics to let me keep fluids down, I would likely have puked myself to death by now.

kaiwik

06-12-2005, 05:37 AM

Oh dear, here's my list:

tonsillitis - had them out when I was three, after many infections and two weeks in an oxygen tent before they subsided enough to be removed. They were huge, and I had less than a pencil wide opening to breathe through, and everytime I fell asleep I quit breathing and turned blue. I do remember parts of the ordeal.

Chronic bronchitis which inevitably turns into pneumonia - happens at least once a year since I can remember.

Childbirth - seven pregnancies, four live births, three miscarriages, and I am a big time bleeder.

Lupus.

Diabetes.

Hypertension.

Asthma.

An emergency appendectomy.

I also have a chronic sinus abcess which became so infected last winter the doctor was worried it would spread into my brain and do me in. Four consecutive courses of different antibiotics saved me that time.

Scary thoughts, wow.

Broomstick

06-12-2005, 05:40 AM

pneumonia (several times as a child)
food allergies (landed in ER twice)
severe staph infection (featured in one of the SDMB TMI pimple threads)

wenonahbone

06-12-2005, 05:50 AM

Kidney failure. Thank God brother gave me one of his!

Ranchoth

06-12-2005, 05:55 AM

Let's see...

-Pneumonia.
-Would have lost my right pinky finger, and I'd have pretty ***ed up big toes. (Probably wouldn't have killed me, unless I got a bad infection.)
-I have a couple of mental illnesses that, while easily treatable today, would probably have left me either a drunk or a suicide.
-Oh! I got a nastly little infection from a cat scratch on my foot, a few years back. It was starting to travel up my leg by the time I got on antibiotics.

AngelicGemma

06-12-2005, 05:59 AM

I'd have died of meningitis as a baby.

calm kiwi

06-12-2005, 06:04 AM

Not a thing but can we predict our death?

I probably will die of Emphysemia (or something spelled kinda like that :D ), my Nana did and my dad has it and I am entirely too stupid to stop smoking.

Ok, self inflicted deaths probably don't count.

irishgirl

06-12-2005, 06:27 AM

I'd never have been born alive, and my mother would have died too. Basically, she has a small pelvis, and I decided to extend, rather than flex my neck, so there was no way I was coming out. It's called relative cephalo-pelvic disproportion. An emergency c-section brought me into the world.

After that...
Febrile convulsion aged 3 (they had to put me on ice and give me diazepam).
Severe gastro-enteritis aged 6 (IV fluids)

I also have a penicillen allergy which resulted in anaphylaxis when I was 5, but I'd have been fine if penicillen hadn't been discovered.

Athena

06-12-2005, 07:05 AM

When I was around 11 or 12, my parents were out for the evening, leaving me with my older brother (an adult, really - he would have been around 25 at the time.) I was getting ready to go to bed, and checked my thumb, which I'd whacked a day or so ago and was swollen and painful. I noticed a red line going up my arm from the site of the wound. Being a nerdly child, I immediately recognized the red line as blood poisoning, and went to show my brother.

He was dubious at first, but I showed him the line up my arm, and got him to call my parents. They came home, and rushed me off to the ER - all on my self-diagnosis of blood poisoning. Sure enough, that's what it was. The doctor told them that had we waited until morning, I'd have been in pretty bad shape.

fishbicycle

06-12-2005, 07:24 AM

The pneumonia I got a few years ago was a contender. However, the first time I was in any real danger was when I had blood poisoning from an infected cut on my finger. There was a purple line going up my arm, around my armpit and onto my chest when I arrived at the ER to ask what it was. I have never got such fast service at a hospital, and I've never seen a doctor's eyes get big like saucers before or since. Apparently, if I'd missed the bus, I wouldn't have walked into the hospital. I was down to my last twenty minutes.

Idlewild

06-12-2005, 07:48 AM

I needed some kind of small stomach operation to keep food down when I was a baby and would apparently have died otherwise, and then would have popped off from asthma at age 2 without modern hospital treatment. After that I've been pretty impervious to near-fatal stuff. Must be lucky.

citybadger

06-12-2005, 07:51 AM

Unless you count a broken jaw, which would probably would have been survivable even by a caveman; or ordinary dental problems, like fillings, which can cause serious problems, I'd be alive if I was born Paleolithic. And fitter and have lower blood pressure too.

Carm6773

06-12-2005, 07:55 AM

I would not have lived past childbirth. Because of a physical fight between my parents, Mom's water broke at 6 months gestation; they were able to stop the labor. I was born a month later with only a small layer of skin covering the small of my back. My lungs were completely developed (probably because of the water breakage a month before), and the only problems I had were I was 3 lbs, 11 oz and I had a hip socket that didn't form all the way. I went home when I was 3 days old. Keep in mind I was born in 1973; that's a miracle.

Fast forward 4 years, when the doctors discovered a large benign mass behind my right tonsil. The tonsils (which were giving me a difficult time) were removed and the mass was taken out through my mouth. The pressure release left me with a surgical epilepsy, as I had a massive Grand Mal seizure (complete with respiratory and cardiac failure) a few weeks later. I was unconscious for 18 hours afterward. I had another seizure when I was 11 (docs thought I had outgrown it and were trying to remove me from my medicine) which was also complete with respiratory and cardiac arrest.

Between the ages of 8-10, I had appendicitis. My white blood count never rose high enough to mandate surgery, even though I had all the classic signs. The doctors were telling my Mom I was "acting." She finally took me to a surgeon friend of hers (she's a retired registered nurse), who operated the next day. My appendix, which had split, leaked, then resealed itself 3 times was the size of a large grapefruit. I had lymph nodes the sizes of an orange, apple, and walnut from each of the splits. Mom had to sign paperwork saying it was Ok to remove my right ovary (they didn't have to, but I have scar tissue on that side-ovulation HURTS). The appendix burst the moment they took it out of my body.

I fully believe I am on this Earth for a reason, and that reason is my Mom. She had a work ending back injury (6 ruptured discs) 5 years before she became pregnant with me. Dad left shortly after I was born. leaving her to care for me and my invalid Grandma, who died in 1980. Over the years I have had to help her out (she now lives with my husband and myself). If I wasn't here to help her, she would have lived a horrible life and probably died a long time ago. I have also helped some of my friends out of life-threatening circumstances as well. This is why I fully believe there is God and there is a purpose for everyone on Earth.

Ice Wolf

06-12-2005, 07:55 AM

Pneumonia once when I was about 6 - had to be on antibiotics what seemed ages to me then. I was apparently close to coma.
Bronchitis bouts that could have led to pneumonia.

WhyNot

06-12-2005, 08:37 AM

(Well, we're all pissing in the gene pool, now aren't we? :D )

I got yer "modern medicine" right here baby - only 22 years ago my daughter would have died at birth due to extreme prematurity. Before the use of surfactant to make immature lungs slick, her lungs would have dried out and cracked almost immediately. Saving a 23 weeker was unheard of before 1982 and the invention of Exosurf. She would not even have been classified as "premature", but as a terminated pregnancy.

I was (somewhat awe-fully) telling my husband all this as I was lying on the operating table for the c-section, and the anesthesiologist patted me on the head and said, "Sweetie, 50 years ago we wouldn't have been able to save you, either." Turns out that the silent infection I had was exactly the sort that would have gone untreated and led to my death by childbed fever after a bloody miscarriage. Only with more modern intravenous antibiotics were they able to save me.

I never even felt sick! It hadn't even occurred to me until that moment that I was in any danger whatsoever - I was only thinking about the baby coming too soon.

belladonna

06-12-2005, 08:48 AM

Without all the vaccinations babies get in modern times, a very large number of us wouldn't have even lived past infancy at all.

Myself, a bout of pneumonia in high school maybe, the emergency c-section a couple years ago definitely. My older boy would have been one of those orphan types who gets shuttled around to all the aunties and ends up in the priesthood or the military just to get away from them all.

katie1341

06-12-2005, 09:12 AM

I had a mole removed a few years ago that turned out to be a malignant melanoma. It would have killed me if I'd had it before we knew to look for cancer in moles and before we could do biopsies.

JKellyMap

06-12-2005, 09:22 AM

I contracted amoebic dysentery in Mexico years ago. It wasn't properly diagnosed until eight months later, at which point a strong dose of antibiotocs killed off the mothers, but the intestinal lining was already somewhat scarred. It's likely that I would have eventually died of it absent any treatment (although let's not forget that many "pre-modern" cultures have often effective botanical treatments for these sorts of diseases).

Hal Briston

06-12-2005, 10:00 AM

Graves Disease (http://www.ngdf.org/faq.htm).

By the time I was diagnosed (after several misdiagnosis, due to the rarity of this disease, especially in males), I had dwindled down to 112 pounds, and the doc who figured it out told me flat out "If you went for a walk around the block right now, I'd be amazed to see you come around the other side in anything but a body bag". Eep!

Malodorous

06-12-2005, 10:30 AM

AuntiePam

06-12-2005, 10:35 AM

I broke my hip and femur about a month ago. The x-rays were really ugly. I asked the doc how it would have been treated, if it had happened a hundred years ago. He said I would have died.

I didn't ask for details, so I don't know how it would have killed me. I was given a blood transfusion during the repair surgery, and antibiotics, and breathing treatments, etc., so maybe loss of blood, infection, or pneumonia.

SiXSwordS

06-12-2005, 10:35 AM

I too had a staph infection, the internal kind not the super sized pimple kind. Very high fever etc. etc.
I remember going to a gas station to call home. The attendent was making fun of me for being too stoned to stand. The room was spinning and I couldn't remember how to explain to my mom where I was. The counter guy "helped" by saying I was "fucked-up" and she better come get me.
I remember her getting there in a fury. She quickly turned white and took me to the doctor.
I don't remember much for the next couple days. A regular course of antibiotics later and I was fine.

exastris

06-12-2005, 10:36 AM

Well, I could have died during my mom's difficult pregnancy or C-section, but the numerous ear and throat infections as a child also could have done it. Until a few years ago I'd get strep throat about once a year, of course requiring antibiotics, so any of those infections could have done it too.

The most probable way I would have died though would be during a migraine. By the time puberty ended they were so bad that if I didnt have medication, I surely would have drilled a hole through my skull. Or shot one through. Whichever.

StarvingButStrong

06-12-2005, 10:42 AM

I've been remarkably healthy: no infections, no major accidents, no broken bones, no diseases beyond chicken pox/measles/german measles, none of which got or needed any particular medical intervention.

Of course, then there was the uterine cancer.....

Anaamika

06-12-2005, 10:52 AM

FilmGeek

06-12-2005, 10:54 AM

Let's see.

I had a high fever seizure at 6 months (?), I had the measles, mumps, rubella (yes, vaccinated for all three), whooping cough, mono twice, chicken pox twice, followed by shingles, all before I hit 5. I probably would've died from any minor ailment I got while suffering those.

Things that might have killed me: Tonsillitis (fever hit 105 at its highest while taking lots of fever reducers) at age 9 was the only truly serious infection I've had. I was also in a car accident when I was four, in which I hit my head, causing me to seize for a long time until docs dosed me up with something.

dangermom

06-12-2005, 11:35 AM

I would have died from a severe kidney infection arising from the serious UTI I got at about age 22 (I've had many minor ones, but that was a biggie and eventually required Cipro).

If that didn't get me, I would have died in childbirth at 27, when my first baby was large and turned the wrong way, so that she didn't descend at all. I would have labored for days and died of exhaustion.

Of course, I probably never would have gotten married anyway if it was long enough ago, because I'm tremendously near-sighted and would have been a serious liability to a man looking for a useful wife.

percypercy

06-12-2005, 11:40 AM

Hydrocephalus that developed when I was ten months old would have finished me off, but supposing it didn't, I might have died during a seizure(though I haven't yet)
-Lil

Nawth Chucka

06-12-2005, 12:02 PM

Had it not been for the orthotic brace I wore for many years for my scoliosis, I would have died from my ribcage turning and crushing my heart and lungs. The brace kept me from needing surgery, but not by much; my thoracic curve is almost 40 degrees and the lumbar is in the mid 30's. Were my spine straight I would be 5' 10". Last measured I'm 5' 6.5".

JKellyMap

06-12-2005, 12:04 PM

I could have died of malaria when I was two. True, some people survived, but children mostly don't without quinine.

Malaria again when I was 15.

Not to mention I probably would fallen off a cliff or something by now, my eyes are so nearsighted. But we've had glasses for a lot longer than that.

Malaria, twice! Where did you grow up, if I may be so bold -- and what do you think of the idea of some that the world health community should be investing much more in the prevention of malaria?
Just curious.

fessie

06-12-2005, 12:19 PM

I don't think I would have survived being pregnant w/my twins had it occurred 105 yrs ago - they were both in breech position & in no big hurry to make their exit.

Mononucleosis might've done me in when I was 11 were it not for antibiotics.

However, I probably wouldn't have made it to adolescence anyway, since I fractured my skull at age 4, falling off a swing.

But I wouldn't have been on the swing were it not for the surgery performed on my knee when I was a couple of weeks old - my kneecap was goofy & my knee bent forward instead of back. So I'd've been the local gimp a century ago.

davenportavenger

06-12-2005, 12:21 PM

If we're talking pre-Caesarians, I probably wouldn't have been born alive since I was a transverse birth (where the fetus' spine is perpendicular to the mother's spine) and could not have been born naturally. If I survived that, I probably would have been finished off by a string of strep and ear infections; I had them twice a year until I turned twelve. Ironically, this is one of the areas where modern medicine didn't help me--even though my tonsils were totally infected the pediatrician didn't want to remove them since he said that tonsils were actually a beneficial organ, and that they didn't remove them willy-nilly anymore. He said that tonsil surgery was usually unneccessary, and carried a risk of death like any surgery and on and on. So I didn't get them removed. Later my parents took me to an older specialist (who practiced in the barbaric fifties when they took people's tonsils out for any and everything) who took one look at them and scheduled emergency surgery. If I had listened to the "new" medical advice I would probably be either dead or deaf right now (the repeated infections messed up my hearing a little). After getting them removed I didn't have a single throat or ear infection.

I am also legally blind without correction, and although that wouldn't have killed me, it would have made my life very difficult.

Sattua

06-12-2005, 12:36 PM

Hmmm. I was a breach baby, but that was long enough ago that the doctor actually turned me around, instead of doing a C-section. I broke my arm when I was 6, which might have led to something nasty, though not fatal, if it hadn't been set correctly. And I have Hashimoto's thyroiditis which, honestly, might very well not have killed me. I would just be a goitered, hairless zombie with a wonky arm.

MaddyStrut

06-12-2005, 01:44 PM

I had bad rubella and croup as a kid. I'm not sure if that would have killed me or not.

I was in a horrific car accident as a child requiring a lot of surgery and a long recovery. If I hadn't died, I certainly would have ended up a crooked, crippled hunchback or something! Okay, so I probably wouldn't have been in a car accident, but maybe my carriage would have toppled over or something!

I know you said not to count vaccines, but considering the amount of things I managed to step on and cut myself with, I'm sure tetanus would have carried me off had I been a child 200 years ago!

35340

06-12-2005, 01:55 PM

starvation - wouldn't have made it to the sitting up unassisted stage.

panache45

06-12-2005, 02:01 PM

Scarlet fever.
Tonsillitis.
Inner ear abcess.
Measles.
Foot infection.
Ruptured Appendix and peritonitis (a very close call).
Periodontal infection.
Diabetes.
Hypertension.
Off-the-chart cholesterol and triglycerides.

And I should probably add chronic depression and migraines.

Kyla

06-12-2005, 02:29 PM

I've pretty healthy, but not too long ago, I'd never have been born at all. My mom was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when she was nineteen. I was born when she was thirty-three. Yay, medicine!

Baker

06-12-2005, 02:32 PM

I had several bouts with kidney stones and their ensuing infections. If not for modern surgical treatment(I had my right kidney out) and antibiotics, I might be dead now, or at least invalided,

Anaamika

06-12-2005, 02:33 PM

Malaria, twice! Where did you grow up, if I may be so bold -- and what do you think of the idea of some that the world health community should be investing much more in the prevention of malaria?
Just curious.
I was born in India and got the malaria for the first time there, at age 2.

Then, when I was 15, I had a chance to visit India unexpectedly. It was like, SUnday, and they said, "Do you want to fly to India a week from Tuesday?" I loved it so I said "Sure!" We went to the doc and I got all my anti-malarial pills, but you're supposed to start taking them two weeks before or something, and so I must have caught it right after I got there. Then, the gestation period can be up to two months...so I went there in July and came down with it in early September.

As for the world health community investing more resources, I'm inclined to think AIDS is a bigger priority. AIDS is a disease that's even more easily prevented than malaria, after all, you can't control what mosquito bites you but you can control who you sleep with. So I think the majority of resources should be dedicated toward AIDS prevention - but quinine should also be more regularly available.

Two more interesting things and then I'll shut up:

1) American doctors simply cannot diagnose malaria. They told me it was hepatitis, a virus, anything but. We finally went to an Indian doctor who diagnosed it easily and gave me quinine.
2) Malaria attacks your red blood cells and stays in them for up to five years after. I was not able to donate blood for quite a while even when I turned 17, and then even after I had to donate & mark I had malaria, and so they wouldn't use the red blood cells. Also, you can get sick again if you don't take quinine, apparently.

VunderBob

06-12-2005, 02:43 PM

Considering all the stitches I had as a kid, tetanus would be my first guess, with scarlet fever a close second (infected tonsils). They would have gotten me long before I could have developed my current Type II diabetes.

Or, maybe killed by wild animals because of CSS (Can't See Sh*t)

serious lark

06-12-2005, 02:54 PM

I would have been still born if Mom's obstetrician handn't disgnosed an incomepetent cervix.

Also, many asthma attacks requiring hospitalization in childhood.

Chicken pox as an adult (thank God for anti-viral meds)

Viral pheumonia as an adult.

Miss Purl McKnittington

06-12-2005, 03:29 PM

I dunno, Anaamika, you might have been fine with the malaria without 20th century medicine. Quinine has been used since the 17th century to treat malaria and has been widely available since the mid-nineteenth century. Synthetic quinine was a twentieth century development, though.

I probably would have died from Type I diabetes at a young age. I can't think of anything else that would have made me shuffle off this mortal coil, except maybe the bronchitis I had when I was 16 or so. My throat was so raw and swollen that it swelled shut every now and again. The other times I've been prescribed antibiotics for upper respiratory infections it was more cautionary since I'm a diabetic and the doctor wanted to nip the infection in the bud.

Anaamika

06-12-2005, 03:36 PM

I dunno, Anaamika, you might have been fine with the malaria without 20th century medicine. Quinine has been used since the 17th century to treat malaria and has been widely available since the mid-nineteenth century. Synthetic quinine was a twentieth century development, though.

Check the encyclopedia. I don't remember the exact percentage, but there was a percentage of people who died even with the administration of quinine, simply because you can't eat & you can't drink.

A 2-year old child sick with malaria in India stood a good chance of dying.

JKellyMap

06-12-2005, 03:40 PM

Thanks, Aanimika, for your informative reply.

kaiwik

06-12-2005, 04:00 PM

Pfft. I scoff at your modern medicine. Had society collapsed in 1979 taking all modern medicines with it, I'd still be fine (well, maybe eaten by a bear or something).

A question though: a lot of folks are citing tonsilitis, which seems very common. Is it really fatal if untreated? In what percentage of cases will a young healthy person keel over from tonsilitis if they don't go under the knife (or get antibiotics)?

For myself, my tonsils were constantly infected, which also caused ear infections. My tonsils would routinely swell to the point that I had practically no airway, and when I would lie down/fall asleep, the airway would close up and I quit breathing.

Also as a result of so many burst eardrums from infections (my dad didn't cotton to paying for doctors) I have a lot of scar tissue and hearing loss. Not fatal, but definetly a bit of a problem.

I forgot fish poisoning, which I got while working on a boat. I was helping bait up for a halibut trip and cut my finger while cutting bait (herring). Although it wasn't modern medicine that saved me, when a red line began creeping up my arm the skipper had me soak my hand several times a day in the hottest bleach water I could stand. It worked.

Nancarrow

06-12-2005, 04:30 PM

Hydrocephalus as a baby - I was nearly three months premature. But I've got a really cool head x-ray out of it. Big tubey thing right in the centre of my braaaiiin.

Baldwin

06-12-2005, 04:31 PM

Nail through my hand as a child, with a nasty infection (grossly swollen hand). Also, a ruptured appendix a few years back, with sustained high fever and some delerium; I imagine either of those would have killed me without antibiotics.

Go You Big Red Fire Engine

06-12-2005, 05:20 PM

Would've died in the womb if not for my induced birth.
Allergic reaction to the pertussis vaccine (which gave my little sister severe brain damage as she went untreated)
2 months with Pneumonia.
Drug Overdose.
Spider bite.

OtakuLoki

06-12-2005, 05:55 PM

Me? I might have died in childbirth - I was a c-section, but at the time, the trend was for a difficult birth to be delivered by c-section, whether it was necessary or not. AIUI, there was no reason beyond a difficult delivery for the decision for a c-section.

And I was nearly killed by modern medicine. I got infantile pneumonia, and was given penecillin. And got much worse. Turns out I'm allergic to penecillin.

Of course my father, who predates even sulfa drugs, also had infatile pnuemonia. When he was doing most poorly they ended up having to physically drain fluid from his lungs. At the time the surgeon would be shown the case, and the patient was prepped, then operated on. Once the operation was over, the surgeon had nothing more do to with the patient. Now, draining fluid from the lungs of an infant involves a lot, including an incision between the ribs, that left a pretty prominent scar. If the patient survived.

I think it's incredibly telling that when my father was getting his school physical a few years later, it was the same doctor who'd been his surgeon at the time. (This was something the surgeon did as a return to the community sort of thing.) When he saw my father, he'd had no idea who he was. But when he had my father turn around, and he saw the scar, he said something like, "You're that baby! You'r still alive?!"

percypercy

06-12-2005, 06:05 PM

Hydrocephalus as a baby - I was nearly three months premature. But I've got a really cool head x-ray out of it. Big tubey thing right in the centre of my braaaiiin.

Heh! I can top that. I have a shunt card with my ct scan right on it in handy wallet size. It's supposed to be if I'm out of town or in some other situation where the originals aren't handy when my shunt breaks, but it's also a good conversation piece.
-Lil

phouka

06-12-2005, 06:27 PM

The big one would have been around seven years ago when I went to the doc with a fever, abdominal pain, and a little voice in the back of my head saying "go to the hospital, NOW. Good voice. Turns out I had a strangulated bowel caused by scar tissue from a bout of PID. Had medical science not been available to put me under general anesthesia, cut me open, and remove the scar tissue, my bowel would have ruptured, and I would have died of an infection caused by my own wastes filling my abdominal cavity. Talk about the promise of ugly, agonizing death.

pullin

06-12-2005, 08:26 PM

Hmmm. Don't really want go into the details, but I can count 5 surgeries that fixed deal-breakers.

MLS

06-12-2005, 09:36 PM

Mononucleosis might've done me in when I was 11 were it not for antibiotics.

That must have been a different kind of mono than my daughter had. Our doctor said mono is caused by a virus. The only treatment was the usual rest, liquids, etc.

Silentgoldfish

06-12-2005, 09:47 PM

I was a forceps delivery, so I and my mum probably would have died in childbirth. Failing that, I'm very lucky I don't have brain damage common in forceps births, aside from having very incredibly mild cerebal palsy. It's a bit embarressing saying that though as I've met a people that have it pretty severely and after I eventually learned to coordinate my fingers as a little kid I didn't even know I had it till my mum told me.

After I was born it turned out I had pyloric stenosis, which is a condition where the sphincter between the stomach and small intestine is too tight to allow food through. If I hadn't had the surgery to fix that I would have either starved, or gotten brain damage through lack of nutrition. Even with the surgery I had wicked reflux until I was in my mid teens.

Aside from those though I'm incredibly healthy!

JKellyMap

06-12-2005, 09:54 PM

Turns out I had a strangulated bowel caused by scar tissue from a bout of PID. .

What is PID, may I ask?

eleanorigby

06-12-2005, 10:00 PM

PID=Pelvic Inflammatory Disease.

I would have died of scarlet fever or gestational diabetes or the delivery of my last child or the abortion I had two years later.

What about the auto-immune stuff I have now which could be (tentatively) linked to the weekly flatplates (Xrays) of the abd my mother had for the last 6-8 weeks of her pregnancy? They were looking at the plates at the end of my long bones to see if I was full term or not. Yeah-there's a standard of care for ya! :rolleyes:

Beware of Doug

06-12-2005, 10:11 PM

Febrile convulsions, appendicitis, adult-onset chicken pox, ditto diabetes, hypercholesterolemia, depressive personality, and attention deficit (which could have taken me out numerous times during mundane activities like driving, and indeed, may yet do so).

Ashes, Ashes

06-12-2005, 10:27 PM

I'd be just fine. My delivery was easy, had the chicken pox when I was five and had never even had an earache before I was twenty five (which was already healing by the time I saw a doctor). I had food poisoning a couple of years ago and a thorn in my left heel that had to be snipped out. That's it. The very few bad things I've had were very light/minor.

My mom might not still be alive, though. She was quite overweight and had a gastric bypass. But would she have gotten so heavy, way back when? Her weight and smoking led to a heart attack and quadruple heart bypass, but if you go far enough back, there'd have been no tobacco.

My dad would have been even more healthy than I, and then dead as a doornail, from pancreatic cancer. Modern medicine hasn't fixed that one yet, but at least it made his exit a lot less painful.

InternetLegend

06-12-2005, 10:42 PM

Mr. Legend and I used to love playing this game! We're fairly evenly matched, too. I'd have probably died from rabies at the age of five (my own, very definitely rabid, dog bit me hard, drawing blood). Mr. Legend would have died from a burst appendix at age 13 or, had he somehow survived the appendicitis and resultant peritonitis, from typhoid shortly thereafter.

Mirror Image egamI rorriM

06-12-2005, 11:06 PM

Rabies? Did you get the vaccine?

Anyway, I had Crohn's disease when I was little, like 5, which was kind of weird because Crohn's doesn't usually hit until people are adults. I probably would have wasted away from not getting the nutrients from what little food I ate (Crohn's also gives you anorexia. Not anorexia nervosa, you just don't want to eat).

Sarah Woodruff

06-12-2005, 11:20 PM

I was a forceps delivery, so I could have died at birth.
I had a rare gum infection when I was 1 year old, so I could have died in an age before antibiotics.
Tropical skin disease when I was 5 contracted from an aeroplane seat of an airline that is no longer with us (unsuprisingly). Cured with antibiotic cream prescribed by a Tropical Medicine specialist in London.
Gastroenteritis when I was 9.
Asthma since age 11.
Bladder infection aged 17.
And the usual bouts of bronchitis, pneumonia, influenza.

Basically, I wouldn't be sitting here unless I'd lived my life in some remote, unpolluted village in the Alps, or something.

Chanteuse

06-12-2005, 11:26 PM

An ectopic pregnancy.

I would have bled to death internally.
Same here.

As it was, they removed nearly a liter of blood from my abdomen after the thing ruptured. My husband said I was so pale after surgery that even my lips were practically colorless.

Queen Bruin

06-12-2005, 11:56 PM

Silentgoldfish

06-13-2005, 12:27 AM

Rabies? Did you get the vaccine?

No, she's dead.

Hokkaido Brit

06-13-2005, 05:10 AM

I'm a twin, we were both breech, and my mother was left (in the 1960's) to labour alone for three days before a forceps delivery to allow the consultant to go on holiday.

So I suppose I might have died then and there.

Very healthy until the birth of my first kid - his head was too big for my pelvis, so I had a cesarean. He MIGHT have been born, after a very long labour, but he might have not.

Assuming I survived that, then I got cataracts so I'd have maybe died from not being able to look after myself, depending on how long ago we are thinking about.

Then my second baby was placenta previa, which has a 100% percent chance of maternal death if you don't have a cesarean, so that's me gone at the age of 34 at the oldest!

Sophistry and Illusion

06-13-2005, 05:25 AM

My very first thread...and it's gotten so big! I'm so proud of it!

:: sniffs::
:: wipes away a tear ::

WhyNot

06-13-2005, 06:56 AM

*blows whistle*

I have to call a foul on the "forceps delivery" trend we're developing here. Forceps are not new - they've been used for thousands of years, well before anything we could label "modern medicine."

They're oogy and scary nowadays, but in the 1920s they were routine, and in properly trained hands, very safe.

emedicine.com (http://www.emedicine.com/med/topic3284.htm):

History of the Procedure: The history of obstetrical forceps is long and, often, colorful. Sanskrit writings from approximately 1500 BCE contain evidence of single and paired instruments; Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Persian writings and pictures refer to forceps.

The credit for the invention of the precursor of the modern forceps to be used on live infants goes to Peter Chamberlen (circa 1600) of England. Modifications have led to more than 700 different types and shapes of forceps. In 1745, William Smellie described the accurate application to the occiput, rather than to the pelvis, regardless of the position of the head, which had been performed previously. In 1845, Sir James Simpson developed a forceps that was designed to appropriately fit both cephalic and pelvic curvatures. In 1920, Joseph DeLee further modified that instrument and advocated prophylactic forceps delivery. In an era in which many women labored and delivered under heavy sedation, forceps deliveries became common.

In current obstetrical practice, the use of forceps has become much less common. Clinical studies performed before the 1970s suggested that the risk of fetal morbidity and mortality was higher when the second stage of labor exceeded 2 hours (Dennen, 1989). With contemporary obstetrical management, morbidity rates no longer increase with longer labors if fetal surveillance is reassuring. Thus, the length of the second stage of labor alone is no longer an indication for operative termination of labor.

Other factors were also at work to decrease the use of forceps deliveries; in particular, the availability of blood products and greater choices in antibiotics helped make cesarean delivery a safe alternative to operative vaginal deliveries. Finally, in the 1980s, information became available suggesting that some forceps deliveries (midforceps deliveries) may be associated with long-term adverse consequences to the fetus. These factors combined to greatly reduce the appeal of forceps delivery.

Currently, many obstetrical training programs in North America struggle to teach forceps delivery. Problems include (1) a lack of adequate personnel comfortable with teaching forceps-assisted vaginal deliveries and (2) changes in consumer attitudes and the consequent demand for natural delivery. In addition, many practitioners fear litigation if a forceps-assisted delivery results in a poor outcome.

Mississippienne

06-13-2005, 07:56 AM

I think I'd be okay, baring some accident or smallpox or death in childbirth. My mother suffered through a long, excruciating painful, but not life-threatening, delivery. I've never suffered from any serious illnesses or defects. Without eyeglasses I'd be severely near-sighted, but eyeglasses have been around since the 13th century in various forms.

Walkabout

06-13-2005, 08:08 AM

Another ectopic pregnancy here. And if I had died then, my two kids from subsequent pregnancies would not have been born.

I suppose I also could have died from the infected foot I got from stepping on a nail when I was a kid, too.

Bippy the Beardless

06-13-2005, 10:41 AM

I'd have died from burst appendix and the resultant infection.

Emony Dax

06-13-2005, 10:50 AM

Malignant melanoma.

Nobody would have suspected a new, oddly-colored mole of causing death in an otherwise healthy 25-year old.

Sal Ammoniac

06-13-2005, 11:02 AM

Osteomyelitis in my heel, which untreated would have turned gangrenous. Back in the day, they'd have taken my leg off with an unsterilized saw, which would probably have finished me. If I had survived that, my appendix would eventually have gone -- though not till I was an adult.

Boy, this is an illuminating thread. What a crapshoot life is, eh?

fessie

06-13-2005, 11:21 AM

That must have been a different kind of mono than my daughter had. Our doctor said mono is caused by a virus. The only treatment was the usual rest, liquids, etc.

Huh! I don't know anything about mono, other than that I had it & was given penicillin (little white pill shaped like a flying saucer) and some big yellow honker pill. In bed for 2 weeks, watching Hazel & other reruns on our little b&w tv. And lots & lots of bloodwork.

Somebody mentioned febrile convulsions - I didn't think those were at all fatal. Scary for the parents, to be sure, but nothing to really worry about.

BarnOwl

06-13-2005, 11:25 AM

Funny thing about appendicitis. I worked as a night call Lab Tech at a Hospital in Western Mass back in the 50's-60's.

I could be mistaken, but I think my boss, the Pathologist (or maybe one of the Surgeons, or both), said that half the appendices that are removed are normal.

The patient can present all the classic symptoms of acute appendicitis and have the operation. But half the time the appendix will be perfectly normal.

Yet in either case, the symptoms go away and the patient recovers uneventfully.

LavenderBlue

06-13-2005, 11:30 AM

I was born with an intestinal obstruction and operated on when I was three days old.

I have a huge scar across my upper abdomen but that's a price I'll gladly pay for the privilege of being alive.

This is one fascinating thread.

Anaamika

06-13-2005, 11:31 AM

Thanks, Aanimika, for your informative reply.
Hee hee! This means "Whoa, way too much information, I'm overloaded."

Sorry about that!

Amazon Floozy Goddess

06-13-2005, 11:48 AM

I could very well be dead of a kidney infection by now if it weren't for today's antibiotics. I've had problems with recurring bladder infections, which we know can spread to the kidneys if not treated. My great-grandmother died of a kidney infection at 27 so it may be hereditary.

elfbabe

06-13-2005, 11:54 AM

When I was a young'un, (under 7, I think) I got some sort of continuous-vomiting disease and couldn't keep anything down, even water. I got some nice IV fluids in the hospital and felt much, MUCH better. I don't know if I would have actually died without them, but that's the most severe thing I can think of at the moment.

My physical health has really been quite good, honestly. I probably would have survived long enough to attempt to reproduce and replace all of the rest of you. That is, of course, assuming that my general physical ineptitude didn't get me eaten by tigers or something.

Qadgop, am I forgetting anything?

Anne Neville

06-13-2005, 12:45 PM

If the many ear infections I had as a kid didn't kill me, the kidney infection that developed from a urinary tract infection when I was 23 probably would have.

Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor

06-13-2005, 12:53 PM

Asthma, as an infant.
Thanks Mom, thanks Dad.
You never gave up on me. :)

Cervaise

06-13-2005, 03:49 PM

After all the childbirth horror stories and infectious diseases, here's a thread first:

Repeated spontaneous pneumothorax (http://www.chclibrary.org/micromed/00061170.html).

Happened four times. Once would have been enough.

Nancarrow

06-13-2005, 04:07 PM

Heh! I can top that. I have a shunt card with my ct scan right on it in handy wallet size. It's supposed to be if I'm out of town or in some other situation where the originals aren't handy when my shunt breaks, but it's also a good conversation piece.
-Lil

Damn! At the time of my x-rays (car accident, I was unscratched but they wanted to check) I didn't think of asking to keep them :( . Must engineer some situation... not involving cars this time.

So if you don't mind me asking, is your shunt likely to break? What would happen then?

inkleberry

06-13-2005, 05:10 PM

So if you don't mind me asking, is your shunt likely to break? What would happen then?

She'd be shunt out of luck. :D

percypercy

06-13-2005, 06:35 PM

So if you don't mind me asking, is your shunt likely to break? What would happen then?

Well, I went through a really shitty period when I was about ten. The damned thing broke three times between the time I was ten and twelve. But I've had this one since then, so that's twelve years.
A broken shunt is not fun. (Begin TMI) Take the worst headache you've ever had, including migraines, and multiply it by about twelve. That's a shunt headache. Now add in some vomitting for spice. I've always assumed the vomitting is because of the pain, but I dunno for sure. Then it's off for surgery.
This only became a problem when I was in the Caymans with my family when it decided to break. It had already broken, it turns out, before I got on the submarine that afternoon which explains why I can hardly remember that part of the trip. That night I convinced my mother of how much pain I was in. We all had to catch the next flight back to the US, but I'm extremely hazy on the details. I remember the wheelchair at the airport. My parents are both doctors so they decided I'd make it back to my neurologist in Memphis, but those two flights with my intracranial pressure screwed up are some I'd never like to repeat.

-Lil

InternetLegend

06-13-2005, 09:44 PM

Rabies? Did you get the vaccine?No, she's dead.But I got better!

I did get the vaccine, yes. With rabies, as long as you're vaccinated before you start to show symptoms, you're generally all right. Because we were in Indonesia and my dad, the only doctor in the area, didn't trust the vaccine's potency, I got 30 intramuscular shots in the abdomen. Lest you think that's bad, he had to give himself the same number. The dog, unfortunately, had to be put down, which hurt me far more than the shots.

p.s. The quoted exchange may well be the one that finally convinces Mr. Legend he belongs here and should register.

Mama Zappa

06-14-2005, 08:44 AM

The asthma might've done me in - I've never had required modern resuscitative techniques because of it, but modern preventive meds have kept me from getting that far gone.

The main thing that might've killed me was the pre-eclampsia (toxemia) with my second pregnancy. A few more days and I might have died. And without modern NICU techniques my daughter might have died or suffered severe respiratory impairment.

CalMeacham

06-14-2005, 09:13 AM

I was in the hospital twice as a kid. Once from Bronchial Pneumonia, the other time from tonsilitis.

It seems to me that just about all my childhood friends had their tonsils out, like me (although Pepper Mill didn't). Was there a particularly bad strain of tonsilitis at the time, that demanded such extreme treatment? Or were we the victims of a medical fad?

It's possible that something else might have popped up, as well. We were all immunized against Polio as kids, first with the multiple-needle Salk vaccine, and later with the oral Sabin vaccine. But my wife's sister was old enough to catch the disease before either of these were available, and she did. Survived without ill effects, fortunately, but i still grew up on horror stories about FDR and iron lungs.

Tupug Anachi

06-14-2005, 09:26 AM

Another case of cephalo-pelvic disproportion here, diagnosed after my first c-section. My first-born was also twenty-five days overdue and I never went into labor. My OB tried to induce which resulted in fetal distress and the decision to do a c-section. There was almost no amniotic fluid and my daughter had begun to lose weight. Would I have gone into labor before my daughter died? If so, would the cephalo-pelvid disproportion have finished us off? I don't know, but I have my doubts that either of us would have survived.

Aangelica

06-14-2005, 10:01 AM

Oddly, modern medicine has tried to kill me much more often than it's saved me.

I have a quirky life-threatening allergy to the NSAID class of drugs. My reaction is characterized by a really, really, really high fever, severe vomiting, blinding pain, and anaphylactic shock. It didn't get diagnosed until I was around ten - which meant I used to get treated for routine childhood illness with aspirin or Tylenol only to suddenly get really quite ill.

Other than that I had a few respiratory infections and the occasional bout with strep throat and UTI that may or may not have done me in without antibiotics. It's hard to tell if the drugs saved my life or if I'd have fought off the infection without their assistance in the end.

Nancarrow

06-14-2005, 05:04 PM

Well, I went through a really shitty period when I was about ten. The damned thing broke three times between the time I was ten and twelve. But I've had this one since then, so that's twelve years.
A broken shunt is not fun. (Begin TMI) (Enough TMI)

Yikes :eek: thanks for the info. You've inspired me to go look up this stuff on the net. I guess I was lucky, they removed the shunt tubing when I was five and I've hardly thought about it since (there's just a scar near my stomach). Still got the catheter in my braaaiiin though. Guess they had second thoughts about getting that out.

Hope you have no more problems with it.

Cockatiel

06-14-2005, 05:22 PM

WhyNot

06-14-2005, 07:39 PM

I might have died of heart failure...*gulp*. I had surgery when I about 2 or 3. It was a repair of the patent ductus arteriosus. There's this small blood vessel in everyone's heart that is supposed to close up when you're 3 or 4 weeks old. Unfortunately, like my mom, mine did not close up, so they had to slip a very small piece of metal up through a vein in my leg through the aorta to cover the hole.

Sorry that the explanation isn't exactly clear, I've been asking my dad to explain this to me.
Actually, in most babies, it closes within 3 days of birth, sometimes even hours. It's pretty neat. The hole is there in the uterus to allow the blood to bypass the lungs - the fetus doesn't breathe on his own. Once the baby is born and oxygen hits the lungs, the hole starts to close. Or it should, anyway.

If the ductus arteriosis doesn't close soon after birth, then the oxygen rich blood that just came from the lungs to the heart can go back to the lungs, instead of through the rest of the body. It mixes with the oxygen-poor blood that's being pumped to the lungs to get oxygen. This increases the blood pressure in the lungs, sometimes to dangerous levels. Additionally, the pulmonary artery will become inflammed (well, the lining of it will), and prone to bacterial infections. Not a good thing.

Some kids with a PDA are just fine, and don't need any treatment, or only nutritional support. Usually they try giving the baby a drug called Indomethacin, which is similar to asprin or ibuprofen and can help the PDA to close. (This feature of asprin and ibuprofen is why they are off limits to pregnant moms in their third trimesters - it runs a small risk of closing the PDA too soon.) Other kids need surgery. In your surgery, they took a catheder (tiny tiny flexible tube) and fed it through a small incision in the groin and through your largest blood vessels to the heart. Then a little coil or occluder was fed through the catheter and put into place like a marrionette. The catheter is then slowly pulled out the groin.

Here's a drawing of the PDA and two devices commonly used to block it. (http://www.rch.org.au/cardiology/health-info.cfm?doc_id=3540)

user_hostile

06-14-2005, 08:32 PM

Pneumonia almost finished me off at the age of three. This is the earliest child-hood memory I have. My mom, who was a RN, took me to the hospital. I was put in the children's ward. My Dad came in from work and told me later that he demanded I be put into a semi-private room because he figured I'd die and no one would notice. (he also told me 40 years later that he was very angry with me; when I asked why, he said, "because I was totally helpless and scared that you were going to die."). I remember it was really noisy in the ward.

When they moved me to the semi-private room, I missed a second brush with death when the old man in the next bed wanted to kill me for holding down the channel button on the "remote". In those days, the "remote" consisted of an external channel changer wired to an electromechanical relay. It made a satisfying "cha-chunk" for each change. Now imagine holding it down for an hour or two... well, it seemed like an hour or two. The nurses showed up and seized the remote from me; they were pretty surprised to find that someone as ill as I was proved to be pretty obstinate about letting go of my new "toy".

percypercy

06-14-2005, 09:17 PM

Yikes :eek: thanks for the info. You've inspired me to go look up this stuff on the net. I guess I was lucky, they removed the shunt tubing when I was five and I've hardly thought about it since (there's just a scar near my stomach). Still got the catheter in my braaaiiin though. Guess they had second thoughts about getting that out.

Hope you have no more problems with it.

Heh, no problem. I can go on if you want.... Sometimes I can hear my shunt bubbling. It's like when your stomach makes noises but in your head.
-Lil

lizardling

06-15-2005, 11:35 PM

Born with a dislocated hip. I'd have been pretty well outta luck with that. I should ask my parents for more details, but I remember looking at the pictures of baby me in a half-body cast. With a little hatch in the arse. :D Stroller with wooden pegs to wedge me in so I didn't go shooting out of there.

They operated on me to fix my hip, and nearly thirty years later the only evidence I have of the experience bar pictures is a tiny scar in my left groin where the docs apparently snipped a tendon or ligament or something in order to get my hip back into the socket.

And asthma. I never had the O2 tent, but my dad's an MD, and I vividly remember the big blue contraption, glass bottles and tubing and a little cork ball in a jar and all. I got really good at measuring out the medicine for putting in there at an early age. I'm stoned on cold medicine, so I cant' remember what it's called. I used to get attacks just from doing one loop around the living room sofa sectionals. Was on Slo-Bid for yonks. So I guess it was pretty severe asthma.

Large Marge

06-15-2005, 11:44 PM

Same here.

As it was, they removed nearly a liter of blood from my abdomen after the thing ruptured. My husband said I was so pale after surgery that even my lips were practically colorless.

[minor hijack] Ditto. Did they try to give you a transfusion? Before my surgery, my doctor asked me if I would accept one, and I emphatically said, "NO." He kept asking me and asking me, as though I'd change my mind. I had decided long before the incident that I never wanted a transfusion--that I'd rather die than have one--but doctors don't like that idea much. Modern medicine and all that.

After the surgery, I had a hemoglobin of 6, but I recovered just fine. You? [/minor hijack]

The Vorlon

06-16-2005, 10:14 AM

The Vorlons are friends of the Medical Mafia :rolleyes:

Mrs. Vorlon has enough scars on her to play a few games of tic-tac-toe.

Gallblader gone

Knee scoped

Bowel adhesions from the gallblader trip removed

Girly bits cooked and snipped

Bilateral pulminery emboli. The game-over issue. Had to go cross country to have her lungs roto-rootered. I have the pictures here somewhere. You are in sad shape when they give you a t-shirt with your number on it, and its in the mid hundreds....

I got to have 3 strokes while 1500 miles away on a business trip. Got to spend 11 hours on the table, over 2 days, watching them play Nitendo in my brain puting in a stent.

Yes, you get to be awake for the fun.

We are frequent flyers to our phamacy.

lisacurl

06-16-2005, 10:15 AM

I would have died of asthma before my first birthday. I was revived by paramedics five times in my first year. My mother had recurring dreams of being in a cemetery looking at my headstone.

elfbabe

06-16-2005, 01:07 PM

I had decided long before the incident that I never wanted a transfusion--that I'd rather die than have one--but doctors don't like that idea much. Modern medicine and all that.

:confused: ... are you a Jehovah's Witness, or someone who has some other religious objection to accepting blood transfusions? Otherwise... why such strong opposition to it?

butler1850

06-16-2005, 02:59 PM

Though my father was unable to capture the cat (and have it tested for rabies) that scratched/bit me while I was an infant in Turkey (father was a USAF Airman stationed there) in the early 1970s. I underwent the old fashioned treatment of shots to the belly... lots of them apparently. I was too young to remember it (that part I'm happy about, but I wish I remember the time we lived there).

Mrs. Butler and the now 10week old Butlerette would have died on the table back in 'olden times.' Butlerette decided to look where she was going, instead of putting her head down and charging through the (too small anyway) birth canal. Any future Butler progeny will be by c-section as well.

Mr. Butler would have likely wanted to die if the above mentioned Butler girls had died during childbirth.

A c-section saved 3 lives in this case.

Other than a few cuts that required stitches (hint: say NO to experimental stiching procedures. My knee scar is as big as the original wound, YMMV) and a fracture in each leg from various stupidities/accidents in my misguided youth, I've done pretty well.

Mr. Butler Sr. would likely be dead if it wasn't for his blood pressure medicine.

Large Marge

06-16-2005, 03:36 PM

:confused: ... are you a Jehovah's Witness, or someone who has some other religious objection to accepting blood transfusions? Otherwise... why such strong opposition to it?

No, I just don't trust the Red Cross. It's not that I don't believe it does everything it can to ensure its blood is safe; it's that every 5-10 years, there is another story about yet another disease no one knew was transmittable by blood until it turned up in thousands of patients who had received blood transfusions years earlier.

I don't want to survive near-death from an ectopic pregnancy merely to spend the rest of my life with some yet-untested-for-disease I obtained from a transfusion.

Yes, I realize the risk of receiving an illness from a transfusion is low, but it just wasn't worth it to me.

RancidYakButterTeaParty

06-16-2005, 04:31 PM

1. I fell through the ice on a lake when ice-fishing with some friends and their dads when I was 9 years old. The ice kept breaking when I tried to pull myself out, so they made a human chain of sorts and pulled me out.

2. I fell about 20 feet when working construction with a pair of metal stilts attached to my legs. I landed head first on the ground, and was out cold for about 36 hours. I lost 6 months worth of my short term memory, including getting married!

3. I flipped my best friends car into a canal leading into a lake we were fishing at. We landed upside down in the water and the car was completely submerged. Scariest moments of my life without question. Luckily, we must have hit a tree or something on the way into the canal and it broke out one of the windows. This did fill the car with water almost immediately, but I eventually found it and escaped.

That's all.

RancidYakButterTeaParty

06-16-2005, 04:32 PM

Okay, so I failed to read the OP very carefully. My apologies for the above post.

Cheez_Whia

06-16-2005, 05:15 PM

Childbirth, twice. First one, cervix would not dialate past 3 cm without pitocin, and doc had to use forceps, also. Second one (The Sausage Creature), labor stopped after delivery with placenta still inside. Had to induce to deliver it, or hemmorhage and/or infection would ensue. Sorry if TMI.

elfbabe

06-17-2005, 05:11 PM

I had decided long before the incident that I never wanted a transfusion--that I'd rather die than have oneevery 5-10 years, there is another story about yet another disease no one knew was transmittable by blood until it turned up in thousands of patients who had received blood transfusions years earlier.
...
Yes, I realize the risk of receiving an illness from a transfusion is low, but it just wasn't worth it to me.

I fully understand not getting a transfusion if you can survive without one for those reasons. But... you would rather die than get a transfusion because your donor might have an as-yet-undiscovered disease... that might be transmittable by blood... that you might get... that might be fatal or incurable? (Malaria and syphilis are transmitted by blood, and we can treat them quite well nowadays.)

:confused:

Well, to each her own, I suppose.

Given your views, have you considered banking your own blood?

Hokkaido Brit

06-17-2005, 06:36 PM

I think that you can bank your own blood but it doesn't last long...

When I had placenta previa, I started to bank my own blood - there was a three week cycle, as the hospital I was in only kept blood for 21 days before chucking it. In my case, they recycled it back into me!

The first week I had 400ml (about a pint) taken, and injections to stimulate production.

Week two I had another 400ml taken.

Week three I had another 400ml taken.

Week four I had 400ml taken, the first 400ml put back, and 200ml taken for a net gain of 200ml.

That then turned out to be a bit of a disaster, as I went all sick and sweaty, and lay there sobbing as they gave me fizzy lemonade and rubbed my feet. I think it didn't help that my blood seems to clot easily, and it was clogging the filters, which they kept changing. At one point one of the technicians mislandled the bag, and blood leaked all down his arms and onto the floor - urgh!

At that point I had one litre banked, and they said they'd stop, as the upset was making me have contractions, which they were trying to avoid.

In the end I lost 2 litres of blood during the birth, got the one back and made up the other with fluids, injections and being unable to sit up for a week without fainting.

The Dr said that women can survive the loss of a litre of blood but that men can not. She said it was one of the things that helps women to survive during childbirth.

Large Marge

06-17-2005, 07:41 PM

I fully understand not getting a transfusion if you can survive without one for those reasons. But... you would rather die than get a transfusion because your donor might have an as-yet-undiscovered disease... that might be transmittable by blood... that you might get... that might be fatal or incurable? (Malaria and syphilis are transmitted by blood, and we can treat them quite well nowadays.)

:confused:

Well, to each her own, I suppose.

Given your views, have you considered banking your own blood?

In this instance, the risk wasn't worth it to me. Life is good, but life is also hard. I have done most of the things that I wanted to in life, and wouldn't be that devastated if I died tomorrow.

That doesn't mean there won't be future instances where I would consider a transfusion; I just can't think of one at the moment. I'm in the middle of making my advance health care directive, which will address all that should I be unable to verbally offer it.

I did look into banking my blood, but I move and travel too much to make that practical.

Large Marge

06-17-2005, 07:45 PM

I fully understand not getting a transfusion if you can survive without one for those reasons.

I should add, too, that one doesn't know in an emergency situation whether one can survive it or not. Time is what will tell. I did not know at the time that I would survive, though the odds were very good. That helped me make my decision. But people die all the time in surgery.

norinew

06-17-2005, 08:45 PM

Well, I had my first blood infection resulting from a kidney stone when I was 22, so that would almost surely have done me in. Then, if I'd been lucky enough to survive that, either of my first two birthing experiences would have done the job; I had very large babies, and a small birth canal, equallin labors that would not progress, leading to C-sections. Then, about six years after my second child was born, another blood infection due to kidney stones. My doctor assured me that 100 years ago, the infection would have killed me (temp of 104.7 when I reached the hospital, and blood pressure of 84/40); he also said that 50 years ago, I'd have had a maybe one in four chance of surviving it, and as recently as 10 years previously, I'd have been in the hospital for at least a month, instead of the ten days I was actually in.

My husband would have had to have married someone else, because, as near as we can figure, he's had nothing that would have killed him. He's never been hospitalized (aside from his birth, of course), only been on antibiotics once, and never suffered from anything painful enough to require narcotic pain killers. He's never had an IV, either. I hate him. :p

elfbabe

06-17-2005, 09:17 PM

That doesn't mean there won't be future instances where I would consider a transfusion; I just can't think of one at the moment.

Ahh, all right. I was giving too much weight to your earlier "rather die than have a transfusion" statement, then, I think.

Large Marge

06-18-2005, 01:38 AM

Ahh, all right. I was giving too much weight to your earlier "rather die than have a transfusion" statement, then, I think.

Well, no, I don't think you were. I do mean that I would rather die than have a transfusion. I'm just saying that each situation would be unique, and that there is always the possibility that I may change my mind in the future. But I honestly cannot think of an instance where I would accept a transfusion.

How about you? Would you accept a transfusion if a doctor suggested it as a precaution before emergency surgery for internal bleeding, or only if you thought with a level of certainty that you'd die without it?

Katriona

06-18-2005, 10:57 AM

Penumonia - I had it when I was 4, and have a vague memory of being trundled to the hospital several times a week for some shot or another.

EarthStone777

06-18-2005, 11:34 AM

I'd have never been conceived because my father would have died as a child due to asthma. In fact, he was given Last Rights three seperate times as a child before they could get him breathing again.

I had trouble breathing the last time I was stung by a wasp (on the wrist, with my arm up to my shoulder swollen tight as a sausage). The antihistamins I took helped, but I think I might have lived anyway.

Without all the sweets available nowadays, I suspect that my type II Diabetes would never have manifested

So despite those things, I'd probably still be here. . .

Mrs Stone had a half dozen lung inflamations as a baby as well as chronic inner ear inflamations. Without antibiotics, she'd likely be either dead or at least deaf.

EnderWay

06-19-2005, 07:40 PM

Kind of long, but I just had to tell story!

Diverticulitis!

For those of you who don't know what Diverticulitis is, it's when the wall of your large intestine/colon (for whatever reason) has small pouches in it that bulge outward ..like an inner tube that pokes through weak places in a tire tube. These pouches can become infected and the major symptom is abdominal pain! Ya, no kidding. Most of the time
this can be cured by a round of antibiotics, and once you know you have it, getting the recommended amount of fiber in your diet helps prevent further infections/flare ups. Since
the fiber helps keep stuff from lodging in those pouches!

I (not very smart) kept hoping the abdominal pain would go away. I didn't want to
go to the Doctor at the time because I had no Medical Insurance. Well, let me tell you,
never ignore a pain that lasts a week. One of those infected pouches ruptured
and was leaking into my abdominal cavity. When I woke up yellow ... and I mean YELLOW
with a 104-deg fever I finally decided to the ER. When I noticed that I was receiving
even prompter treatment that the man with an arm hanging off his arm by a vein,
I knew I was in trouble. I had an abscess in my gut the size of a grapefruit. My body was so infected my heart had started to enlarge. I spent a week and half in the hospital
on IV antibiotics to kill the infection. Went back two months later (on oral antibiotics during that time) to have the section of large intestine that had the perforated diverticulum removed. They gutted me like a fish and took out eight inches of large intestine. I now
have a nice zipper scar that runs from above my navel down to .. well just about as far down as you can go!

ouryL

06-20-2005, 01:33 AM

Septicemia :eek:

Sleel

06-20-2005, 02:56 AM

I was a breach birth that necessitated a c-section. That may or may not have been a deal breaker, however. A breach birth is much more dangerous for the mother than the baby, and in any case c-sections have a recorded history of over 800 years, so modern medicine couldn't realistically claim the save on this one. Although, my sisters probably wouldn't have been born and my mother might not have lived through the surgery in an earlier time.

This was in the early 70s, when US doctors seemed to have less idea about how to deal with childbirth than some third-world nations. My mom was only in labor for 12 hours with me before they put her under the knife, and she was a first time mother who was made to lie flat on her back. An upright birthing position reportedly helps a lot in giving birth and inducing the baby to turn. At least one of the surgeries my mother needed for the three of us kids to be born was botched so badly that her stomach muscles were permanently weakened, leading to years of backaches and a greatly reduced ability to do anything physical. When she finally went to get it treated, the doctor asked, "So, who butchered you?"

In all fairness, my mother would now have a lower chance of serious problems since doctors are finally taking notice of the lower rates of complications midwives usually have and are making changes in how they deal with birth. My aunt specifically went to a midwife for her second birth because of a very unpleasant experience in the hospital with her first one. She had fewer problems, no medical interventions, and a much shorter recovery time. 'Course, it was her second birth too.

I had pneumonia when I was four, and I'm assuming that antibiotics reduced the chances of my dying from it pretty significantly. Of course, I probably wouldn't have gotten pneumonia if both my parents hadn't been smokers. Nice feature of modern life, that. I don't remember it being bad enough to be admitted to the hospital. I pretty clearly remember convalescing at home. So it's also possible I would have recovered on my own without medical intervention. On the plus side, this eventually led to my parents quitting smoking.

My first bone injury occurred about four years ago. It was serious enough to cripple without surgery, but I wouldn't have died from it. I also wouldn't have been in a position to be injured in that way 100 years ago. Modern medicine hasn't really conjured up any miracles a 19th century surgeon wasn't capable of. Bone and joint injury treatment still pretty much consists of putting all the pieces back in the right places, immobilizing the joint, and hoping it heals straight.

Other than those things, I'm pretty darn healthy. Lucky combinations of genes have protected me against most of the genetic screwups in one or the other branches of my family. I don't have the allergies of my mom's side or the nasty astigmatism. I don't have dad's color blindness or my aunt's digestive disorders, and that side's tendency to gain lots of mid-section weight is reduced by a tendency to leanness on my mom's side, from what I can tell.

On the other hand, I'm virtually guaranteed a slow wasting death from cancer if losing my mother, great-uncle, and 3 of 4 grandparents to the big C is any indication. Modern medicine has done squat to increase my chances of living through that. All of their cases were diagnosed early, all of them had early indications of successful remission, and all of my relatives croaked about a year after diagnosis. But not before lots of insurance money changed hands in degrading, painful, highly unpleasant procedures with side effects that rivaled the symptoms of the disease they were being treated for. About all that was accomplished was to prolong the inevitable.

My mother's death was the most fun since she had so many brain tumors from breast cancer, that had an initial "very promising response to treatment" that her personality changed and she had trouble communicating at the best of times. At the worst of times, the lights were possibly on but it was pretty obvious that she was simply not home. All of the usual tests had came back negative, so she was going to stop chemo six months early before she collapsed with multiple gran mal seizures. Whoops, missed the multiple masses in the brain! Not that we could do anything but zap her with radiation and make things last longer anyway. Let's give a big "yay!" for modern treatments that stretched this hell out over 9 months from her collapse instead of a few weeks.

The best treatment for cancer, in my experience, is morphine. Hopefully, by the time I get it, I'll be legally able to kill myself without dispossessing my heirs or getting anybody in trouble with the law.

On the whole, I'd say that for me and most members of my family, modern life and modern medicine has probably done at least as much harm as good. That doesn't mean I begrudge others their successful treatments; I just don't think that medicine deserves its reputation for working miracles. More than one expert has remarked that cleanliness and sterilization have saved more lives than any other medical procedure or treatment. Gee, washing stuff is good for you. Whoda thunk it.

Many of the "advanced" treatments we have now are allowing people to live long enough to--as an earlier poster in this thread put it--pee in the gene pool. Those treatments may be good in the short term, but will undoubtedly cause problems and misery in the future. Lucky for us, we'll all be dead by then, eh?