Would you still be alive without modern medical technology?

Yabbut, pre-modern medicine, you wouldn’t have been hit by a car. :stuck_out_tongue:

My only serious illness was varicella pneumonia at age 3 (not counting chronic strep-throat and other various infections I would have probably recovered from). So…maybe.

I very likely would have died of rabies at the age of six. Of course, if not for modern medicine, my father wouldn’t have gone to Indonesia to work as a doctor, but that’s beside the point.

Mr. Legend would have died either from appendicitis or from typhoid; he had them simultaneously (he came close to dying even with excellent treatment) at the age of thirteen.

I’d probably be alive. I was a sickly child, but probably could have survived most everything, and I never had anything severe enough to be hospitalized. I think the worst thing I would have dealt with would be possible death from allergic reactions to poison ivy; as a kid, I got it every year and puffed up like the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man. I suppose I could have died of anaphylactic shock from it if Nellie Oleson shoved me into a huge patch of it.

I’d hate to see how I’d have survived the non-threatening but painful incidences, though: stepping on mom’s sewing needles, the ubiquitous wisdom tooth problems. Poor eyesight would have severely limited my usefulness in general.

I’d have gone blind from iritis as an adult. Hell, I almost did with modern medicine, since modern medicine only works when the diagnosis is a correct one. (Hint: you’re not supposed to lose your eyesight with pink eye!)

Born by emergency C-section, so I’d probably have been stillborn. Actually, I wouldn’t have existed to begin with because my parents needed help to have kids.

I have a congenital heart defect, so no, I wouldn’t. But after 13 major operations before I was 5, all I can say is I am glad I wasn’t born sooner.

My husband would have been dead at 12. He had an autoimmune attack where his body decided that his kidneys were foreign objects and tried to reject them.

I have been pretty physically healthy, but I most likely would have killed myself without modern anti depressants.

Multiple serious head injuries, multiple serious lung infections, multiple significant asthma attacks.

ONE of them would have gotten me, eventually.

No. I would have died giving birth to my son, who probably also would have died.

I think I would’ve been okay. I wasn’t born via C section, so unless the germs got me in babyhood, I had a reasonable chance at making it. None of the women in my immediate ancestry died of childbirth complications (ah, them birthing hips!) and I know because I’ve done a LOT of genealogy. One of my great-great-great-grandmothers had FOURTEEN children, seven boys and seven girls, all of whom survived to adulthood, and died at the age of eighty. And if y’all are familiar with my family from past genealogy threads, y’all know I don’t come from gentleman farmer stock.

Going back to the generation of my great-grandparents:

Paternal grandfather’s father GG: died aged 89.
Paternal grandfather’s mother: died aged 79 or 78 (her birth year varies from census to census.)

Paternal grandmother’s father: died aged 88.
Paternal grandmother’s mother: died aged 87.

Maternal grandfather’s father: died age 84 (and continued having children with his second wife well into his sixties)
Maternal grandfather’s mother: died aged 44.

Maternal grandmother’s father: died aged 85.
Maternal grandmother’s mother: died aged 82.

I was diagnosed with SIDS at 6 weeks old (though I think that was a catch-all for aspiration in the 70s), but was resuscitated at the hospital.

Had I survived that, I would have run the chance of dying when I had eclampsia with my son and if that hadn’t killed me, the ectopic pregnancy last year that burst my fallopian tube probably would have.

I also have a seizure disorder. I don’t know that I would die from it, but my life would be a hell of a lot less pleasant were it not for the benefit of modern pharmaceuticals.

My four great grandmothers gave birth to thirty-four children, all live born. My two grandmothers had nine live children naturally. Offhand, in twelve + generations, i don’t remember seeing a great grandmother in my line who died in child birth. Imagine my shock when my kids got wedged and needed medical invention. I guess you can’t rely on genealogy as a predictor of fitness for childbirth - after all, even those great grandmothers who died in childbirth were themselves the end product of generations of successful reproduction.

I’d be alive and healthy, unless a tooth infection got out of control. Physically, I’m pretty well off, except for dental problems, occasional migraines, and astigmatism (which I didn’t even wear glasses for until last year). Two hundred years ago, I’d be missing at least 3 teeth, but otherwise I expect I’d be fine at 31 years old. I could have medicated the migraines with alcohol.

Yes, I think I’d still be alive. I haven’t required much in the way of medical care my entire life. The only thing that sent me to the hospital for more than a few hours was food poisoning, but that resolved itself overnight with bedrest and no medication other than IV saline.

Now that I think of it, I really should’ve asked for some painkillers. The intestinal pain I was experiencing at the time was exquisite.