When I was 9 I developed Ileus. It’s a condition in which your entire digestive system becomes impacted and stops working. I had waste and food matter from my rectum to my esophagus.
(WAY TMI FOLLOWS) I had evacuation treatments in the form of 3 a day enemas and a stomach pump for 9 days along with massive doses of IV antibiotics. Once everything got cleared out, my system restarted.
The doctors were quite surprised that I lived.
Ectopic pregnancy at 21 would have done me in.
I had the measles in high school. I guess that could have killed me. Then with my first child, the dr. told me there was no way she could have come out beside c-section. With my second child, same story, but I almost bled to death as well. Then the 2 pulminary embolisms and the subsequent heart monitoring, blood thinners, lovenox shots…that probably kept me alive too!
I was in an incubator for a day after I was born, so probably about then. If I had pulled through somehow (via the clever application of blankets or some such), then I’d be fine for some time. I never even got Chicken Pox.
My brain tumor would still be causing occasional focal seizures, but I could cope. Oddly enough, if there were medicine advanced enough to locate it, anesthetize me, and remove it, I’d still have bit it 3 months ago without the additional technology to treat my allergy to the anesthesia.
Whooping cough when a tiny wee baby.
Type 1 Diabetes at 19.
Pneumonia at 23.
Yes. From an infected lion bite.
Or maybe I’d just lose a leg. Either way, shudder
Historians speculate that’s what may have been the problem with Anne Boleyn. She gave birth to Elizabeth I and then couldn’t carry a pregnancy to term again.
Wait wait wait… Lion bite?
There has to be a story here, did I already miss a thread on it?
I was born in the third world, so very early on I assume (as in pretty quickly after birth). For instance, my grandfather was a smallpox survivor. My grandfather!!! I was vaccinated for smallpox because I was born right before WHO lifted the recommendations for said country.
The whole anti-vax thing in the US just blows my mind. I was pumped full of them, at a very early age, on account of where I was born. As far as I’m concerned, the vaccines are among the reasons I made it past infancy. And most likely I was jabbed with the thimerosal versions :p.
I don’t think so - a bunch of us have been encouraging him to tell it, but so far nothing beyond “lion bite”.
She’s told it somewhere because I remember a picture of her ravaged clothing. Oh, here.
Aside from anything I was immunized against in early childhood, I would have probably died from severe tonsilitis at around 4 or 5. Those suckers were so swollen I couldn’t eat and if they’d kept going, may have suffocated me eventually, or I could have died from a massive infection.
Childbirth would have gotten me (maybe) with Hallboy (C-Section).
Absolutely I would have died from internal bleeding two years ago when they found everything wonky during a CT scan.
I wouldn’t have survived birth - I was born at 24 weeks gestation, so no hope for me prior to modern medicine… Were that not the case? Probably I’d still be fine - I’ve not had much wrong with me after that, though the gallstones would have been a bitch to live with, rather than have out. Yeah, possibly dead at 22 of gallstones. Isn’t modern medicine nice?
I wouldn’t have been born. My mother’s life was saved by penicillin when she was a child. Without her, there’s no me.
But even that aside, I’ve survived appendicitis, measles, mumps and a couple of kidney stone that, even if they hadn’t been fatal, would have left me pleading for death.
'Nother “deaf in childhood from ear infections” over here. Also, I had a combination kidney/bladder infection that was pretty bad. Other than that, I can’t think of anything life-threatening.
My mom was born with a heart problem and had it operated on when she was about 5, but I don’t know if it was potentially fatal or if it was a quality of life issue. I don’t think my dad or my brother have ever had anything serious to contend with.
1951, , repeat 1970, repeat 1996. One of these days, one of them is going to stick 
Age 18, from infectious mononucleosis/hepatitis with liver damage, and tonsillitis, and a fungal infection in the back of my throat. Gaah!
Presuming my shitty eyesight didn’t lead me off a waterfall or into the jaws of a crocodile or something, as mentioned, and allowing that completely routine problems like strep throat would have been much more complicated until the advent of antibiotics, I absolutely certainly would have been dead at some point before my twentieth birthday, as shortly after my eighteenth I suffered an onslaught of repeated lung collapses, culminating in an ambulance ride and emergency ten-hour surgery to relieve the tension pneumothorax that was crushing my heart.
I’d never have been born- was an emergency c-section for foetal bradycardia with CPD- mum’s pelvis and my head were not ever going to be friends-I got stuck and my heart rate dropped dangerously low.
Apart from that I’d probably have died from dehydration or sepsis at some point…
A febrile convulsion at 3 that was treated with IV fluids and antibiotics or the gastro-enteritis at 6 that was treated with IV fluids, or the hyperemesis that was treated with IV fluids and anti-emetics 8 weeks ago…any of them, if they’d gone on long enough, could have killed me.
10 years old, via cancer.