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.
(Well, we’re all pissing in the gene pool, now aren’t we? 
)
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.
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.
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.
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).
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!
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)?
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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
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".
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 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.
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.
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.