I’d be alive and well. Never had any kind of serious illness, and my broken arm would probably have healed just fine (and less expensively) without treatment. (It was a non-dislocated radial fracture).
Hydrocephalus would most likely have either killed me or left me mentally retarded at ten months old.
If I managed to escape that, the untreated epilepsy would be around to finish me off. But it would be exciting
-Lil
I was hospitalized for one night with bronchitis as a toddler, so that might have killed me in a pre-antibiotics era.
Without braces, my massive overbite would have made it difficult to eat hard foods, plus making me look life a mule.
I’d be pretty useless at anything requiring the ability to see clearly more than two feet in front of me.
I’d probably be dead or dying right now as the cancer I had removed from my knee at age 31 spread through my lungs and other vital organs.
My son (and quite possibly my wife) wouldn’t have survived his birth.
The only time I’ve ever been hospitalized was for needless eye surgery that didn’t actually work in the sense of “correcting the problem and preventing it from recurring”. So you’ve got the eyesight on me, but I was another healthy young thing (and still am, for that matter).
Pretty healthy, although my daughter was a breech, both feet first. So I don’t know what the chances of either of us making it through that delivery would be. However, none of us are taking into account all the diseases we’ve been vaccinated against. None of us know what might have killed us.
My mother would have bled to death at age 20 during my birth, and I probably would have died too - they felt it necessary to give me O2 before fully delivering me since I was in such distress from getting stuck. Having two nurses prying mom’s hips apart to get me out after the doctor realized it was too late to do a c-section probably didn’t take any modern medicine, though.
If I managed to live through that, I’d probably still be here. I’ve only been hospitalized once, and not only did they not know what was wrong, they didn’t know why I got better either. They didn’t do much but give me an IV until I woke up on my own. Given I was just unconscious for 2 days, I probably wouldn’t have died of dehydration untreated. My only surgery was to remove my front baby teeth at age two because they came in without enamal and they were concerned that it might eventually lead to sepsis like it had for my mom. That was a preemptory move, though, so it’s hard to say how it might have gone.
I can’t see more than a foot in front of my face, so that’s not good, but it probably wouldn’t kill me–unless suicidal depression resulting from never being able to leave the house did me in.
The only other thing I can think of was when I was 17 I had a strep infection that got into my kidneys, which caused me to have blood in my urine and feel like total crap (high fever, etc). I’m not sure if I would have been able to fight it off on my own or not. Anyone know what the odds are when something like that goes untreated in an otherwise healthy person?
I had strep throat a lot as a kid. I don’t know if that would have killed me or not.
But I probably would have died within the past year or two of heart failure, pneumonia, or dehydration.
Modern medicine almost got me killed several times before birth, but once I survived that stage, the repeated bouts of tonsillitis at age 9-10 probably would have done me in.
The diabetes at age four probably would have finished me off before long. Assuming, of course, that being born three or four weeks early wouldn’t have done it. I don’t remember Mom and Dad telling me anything about extended hospitalization for that, just that I was a very tiny baby and Dad could hold me across both his huge ham hands. And the broken leg at age 12 probably wouldn’t have been a picnic, but I would have survived it if I could have gotten someone to care for me for the five months it took to heal.
Other than that, I’ve been disturbingly healthy.
I love modern medicine.
I don’t know if the strep (I think) I had at 14 would have done me in, but it was a bad week. The abcessed tooth in my early twenties might have done it, although maybe pulling would have relieved it and cleared the infection. Maybe not, since I went to the doctor because I was having trouble breathing, rather than because I had a toothache. If that didn’t do it, the recent anemia probably would have, considering I was just about one step away from transfusion when it was diagnosed. Of course, even as recently as thirty years ago, I would have been using at least one iron cooking utensil, so maybe that would have prevented it in the first place, or at least kept it in check. I might have just dragged my way through several more years until menopause.
Oddly enough, my mother’s Rh incompatibility didn’t affect any of the four of us. Might have been responsible for the three she lost by miscarriage, though. I don’t know how that works. And of course, without transfusions for her I wouldn’t be here, as she would have died after the second of those “misses”.
Let’s see - I would have died from blood lose after losing about 6 units of blood through a stress ulcer - except - I got the stress ulcer from worrying about surgery (major jaw reconstruction). So modern medicine CAUSED the problem that modern medicine then FIXED. :smack:
I don’t think I’ve ever been on the brink, per se (how would I know, since I already had modern medicine at my disposal?) but I suppose any bad infection could take someone out. I had pneumonia, and I know that kills lots of people, but not all. Same with Kid Kalhoun…he’s been very sick with respiratory infections. Who knows if he’d beat it without assistance? Prolly not when he was a wee infant.
Years of antibiotic therapy are keeping me healthy. I went about 3 years undiagnosed with Lyme Disease before I found a doctor that figured out what all my various symptoms were caused by. I’ve heard in rare cases it can be fatal. If not dead, I’d definitely be suffering a lot of pain, and would be either stupid or crazy as the spirochetes ate my brain without all the antibiotics I continue to take. Don’t get me started on all the problems the antibiotics cause though - that’s another thread.
I’ve had various infections that might have done me in over the years, and my eyesight is really bad, but there’s a good chance I would have made to adulthood. The ectopic pregancy I had when I was 25 would definitely have killed me.
I am RH negative, and have had 5 kids, but not an expert. This was how it was explained to me in layman’s terms. If the baby has RH positive blood, my body will develop antibodies because my body thinks the baby is an infection. It typically doesn’t happen until after the first pregnancy, because my body hasn’t been exposed previously. Subsequent pregnancies would be more problematic if the baby was RH positive, my body would basically attack the baby’s blood, causing miscarriage, still birth, early birth, and often death of the baby. If I remember correctly, you get a shot of Rhogam (which suppresses the immune reaction) at about 7 months, and after delivery. All my children are RH positive. My husband is Rh positive, obviously.
With your mom, your father is probably RH negative also. If he was, there’d be no problem, that’s why there was 4 kids. The miscarriages were probably unrelated events, especially if she had children afterwards. Unless all the kids were RH negative, which is statistically unlikely.
Interestingly enough, modern medicine caused the problem, and then cured it.
Susan
I was sort of kidding. Lots of stuff that gets treated today as if were life-threatening would have scarcely been noticed back then, against the background of ill-health that was commonplace. And I’m sure that if you were robust enough to survive infancy, you probably had an immune system and healing powers that were superior to what most of us have today.
Does tonsillitis kill? If so, then from that when I was a child.
Otherwise, appendicitis for sure. Had it when I was 21. Reminds me of a great-uncle I never knew who did die of a ruptured appendix, in rural Arkansas in the 1930s.
I probably would have died from an abscessed tooth by now, also.
One thing I know I would NOT have died from is dengue fever. I know, because I had it in northern Thailand in August 1989. I was trapped in my house. Literally too sick to move much. Just had to tough it out. Temp of 106 Fahrenheit at one point, but I could not keep taking my temperature, because it hurt too much to shake the thermometer. I really expected to die and kept waiting to do so. Everyone I knew thought I had gone out into the province I was living in, just like I regularly did, so no one came by. I had no phone. After a couple of days, I started feeling better and finally made it to Bangkok – didn’t trust the local medicos – but by then I was almost recovered. Just got over it.
I’m fairly sure the asthma I’ve sufferred from ever since I was a baby would have done me in.
Threads like this crack me up: we have come so obviously, incredibly far with modern medicine–dramatically longer lifespans, infant survivability rates, recovery from severe accidents that once would have left people crippled for life, etc.–and yet such a significant portion of society thinks it’s better to rely on hearsay, superstition, personal anecdotes, and folklore for their healthcare.