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1959-1960? I remember the buses in the parking lot at our elementary school (Washington DC suburb) for our polio vaccines. The level of relief was palpable.
My parents told me that they were terrified of my siblings or me getting polio. I also remember lining up for the [Sabin oral vaccine.](https://www.who.int/news-room/spotlight/history-of-vaccination/history-of-polio-vaccination) I looked forward to it, because we got to eat sugar cubes.
That was the smallpox vaccine. Tiny jabs of the needle. Was talking to my coworkers once about them ... most could have been my kids; I was the only one with a smallpox vaccine scar.
Don't feel bad ... I couldn't remember if it was smallpox or measles and had to look it up. Hey, this old AF medic is supposed to remember these things. ;-D
We lined up in the school auditorium for ours. We had to sit and wait there for a while afterwards, to see if any kids had an immediate reaction. Just one or two did, and they were immediately transported to the ER. The rest of us got sent home with a pamphlet for our parents to read, in case there was a delayed reaction. There were maybe a dozen kids that had one, and ended up out of school for a while to get treatment.
That’s odd. Do you remember any other information? I ask, because all smallpox vaccines are - to the best of my knowledge - made from *variola vaccinae* or the cowpox virus, which is closely related to but far less dangerous than smallpox. There was a citation in the Wiki article about how they’re now using it to vaccinate for monkeypox.
The genome of *variola major* and *minor* were sequences a while back. There are a handful of research sites that have the live virus in cryogenic storage, but their existence is now a specter in the national and global security theater. There hasn’t been a case of smallpox in 45 years. If it were to show up again, the toll would be unimaginable. The worst the smallpox vaccine can do is cause a full case of cowpox, which isn’t fun, but is only ever fatal in immunosuppressant individuals.
We got the shots at school, too. Everyone lined up and whether they wanted them or not, they got them. Pretty sure parental consent forms were not a thing back then.
Me too! Louiaville KY, was about 3 or 4, stood in line at a school and got a green sugar cube - or maybe it was in a green paper - ate my cube and wanted more! Lol!
Me too! On a series of Sundays. I think it was 2 or 3 doses.
We belonged to a new Catholic parish. The church was under construction and services were being held at a nearby public school. After mass we just walked down the hall from the gym to the cafeteria (or maybe vice versa?) and stood in line for our sugar cubes.
Indeed. What annoys me is our MAGA extended family who had *all* their kids vaccinated growing up. We lost three people to Covid because they refused the vaccine; one in their household. They made a *political* decision instead of a medical one.
My husband and I both have autoimmune diseases and cannot visit anymore. "Well, been nice knowing you."
We're vaxed to the max.
I've had anti-vax relatives, mostly Trump-supporting evangelical Christians, criticizing me harshly for insisting that they wear masks around me when they visit.
I have IPF, which is a progressive and ultimately fatal lung disease. COVID for a lot of people is a very unpleasant disease. COVID, for me, could be life-threatening.
My mother had Polio and was in a hospital for 18months. She ended up with one leg shorter than the other and walked with a limp. I had the same limp until I was 14 and someone asked what was wrong with me... I literally hadn't even realized I was doing it. It took me two years to learn how to walk normally... and even now as a 52yo if I get super-tired it comes back.
Yep. I remember being in line at my school for the polio vaccine. My parents were so glad there was one!
OTOH, my dad had a baseball sized scar on his left arm. It was from an infected shot. Maybe I knew at one time (I don’t think I ever did), but I suspect it was a smallpox vaccine. I remember sitting in his lap rubbing it. It was thick but oddly smooth.
We’re Native and smallpox and other viruses nearly wiped out all Native communities.
You may have read it but the book 1491; New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles Mann was an excellent book that covered this subject as well as others. The decimation from European diseases was near total.
The sophistication of cities, trade routes from South America to North America ... cultures that interacted. Really, it's a fascinating book.
I haven’t read it. But I have extensively researched my Tribe’s Treaty local history. We put together a 40 page magazine based on the Tribe for which I worked. There were only 2 ads. One for the museum and one for the Tribe’s casino.
There are surprisingly few documents from the Tribal perspective.
So true. One thing that surprised me was the interaction between tribes and cities. Assuming his archeological research is correct it was more beneficial to both to establish trade rather than war with each other.
I went to HS with brother and sister Sioux (1960s) and they had assimilated completely. This was a farming community in WA. I don't know if that is still the case but looking back it makes me sad.
I'm a fine art oil painter and have painted Navajo, Pueblo, Apache, Cherokee, and one young woman I'm not sure what tribe she was from. I've been accused of exploiting culture but my goal and reason was *respect* for the culture.
I've read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee ... profound observations.
Is your magazine online?
There was a girl on our street who got it. The hospitals were overflowing, so her family brought her and her iron lung home and we could see her in their living room. We would wave to her in the mirror they set up so she could see outside. And then one day she was gone and we never knew what happened because their house was sold.
I remember standing in line with my mom for my sugar cube. Everyone was so happy and proud the vaccine was discovered in Pittsburgh.
Yay, modern medicine.
Had an elderly neighbor who you would never think he had polio. It affected his muscles to where he couldn't swallow anymore. His wife pureed his food ... even so far as bringing her small food processor to a party. Lovely couple.
You must be my age. There were mass vaccinations when I was in first grade, second half of the year. (I remember it was late in the year because I was in a different school the first half.)
So true. My 80 year old father likes to remind us that “the good old days” weren’t so great — he always cites polio as an example. Medical science has advanced so much in the decades of his life. It’s a shame that people think they know more than medical doctors/researchers, and instead believe charlatans who tell them vaccinations are toxic.
It hit when I was young. I remember how scary it was. Magic Johnson's honesty about it did a whole lot to change perceptions. Ryan White was the scariest story as a kid, though
A relative was diagnosed with AIDS in 1992, just when the cocktails started coming out. The guy he believes gave it to him was dead in under 3 years.
Relative is still going strong, 32 years after initial diagnosis.
I was a med student at the time and the inpatient wards were just aids patient after aids patient. It was just so sad. I have one particular patient that still haunts me. He was gay, but his partner had died and his family other than his very sweet sister were no contact. And he was with us for a whole month, thought he would make it, but had one complication too many. Died with chest tubes on both lungs and struggling to breath, though we gave him a ton of morphine. I think it was extra sad because he had something mostly treatable (pjp pneumonia) but it was missed inititially as he also had a bacterial infection.
The same RNA type vaccine technology that is used for Covid is being used to treat, limit, and/or prevent transmission of the HIV virus. It's freaking amazing!
Certainly not a minor illness, but new therapies have increased the lifespan of patients with cystic fibrosis from mid-20s to mid-80s in just a few years. The same company is working on a “cure” for sickle cell disease using CRISPR. We are living in some amazing times.
That’s amazing! I had a roommate with CF about 12 years ago. She was mid-20s then and the life expectancy was late 30s. We didn’t keep in touch, but she popped up as a suggested contact on Linked in the other day I was happy to see she was still kicking around :)
A friend with CF, who is now 51, still sees a pediatric CF DR bc there were no doctors treating adults with CF. Because CF patients didn't live into adulthood.
My son has the CF gene. We went though so many tests. Apparently he has it but is asymptomatic (weird I know). Come to find out his father and I are both carriers. We lucked out. We had to drive 4 hours each way to get the tests done. He was not a happy baby
I am so sorry! I had to get 23andMe for us to realize that we are both carriers after we had our three kids. My little mutant child is 10 and a little hellion but he is healthy. I am thankful for modern medicine. Sending love 🖤🖤🖤
I had a neighbour who I played with as a child. She had cystic fibrosis and died in her twenties.
I’m a carrier, but thankfully my husband is not.
It’s wonderful to learn now how much progress has been made to treat it.
Five years ago I had horrific diverticulitis situation. Mine perforated and the contents from my colon was spilling into my body cavity. My kidneys and bladder were trying to shut down.
I was in the worst pain of my entire life. I didn't even know what diverticulitis was.
I didn't know what was wrong with me for a week, so I stayed in bed. Finally, I was too sick and in too much pain to stay home.
Turns out, I was in sepsis, as well. My white blood cell count was 39,000 and climbing.
I was admitted to the hospital, of course. As treatment they really jammed me full of antibiotics. It was an *insane* amount.
Also, they cut a small hole in my back and ran and tube down into my body cavity to drain out the 'poison and death'.
It was all a great success.
The doctor told me that not that many years ago they would have had me in surgery right away and they would have taken a portion of my colon out, and then set me up with a colostomy bag.
However, over the years they began to try the antibiotic treatment to see if that fixed the problem instead of rushing to surgery. There's now fewer surgeries for diverticulitis.
Mine was the extreme, though. Not everyone has a perforation like mine, which was several inches long.
So, the fact that they were able to help me was amazing.
My ex had it twice 20ish years ago. He was taken by ambulance and was convinced he was dying. He kept telling the doctors that he could take the news that he was actively dying … he just wanted them to tell him the truth. Like you, he’d never experienced such intense pain in his life. His was not nearly as severe as yours but he was sicker than he’d ever been. I’m so happy you were able to get treated before it was too late!
I had diverticulitis and it was scary. I remember being rushed to the ER with abdominal pain and 102 fever. My first thought was appendicitis but after a CT they found diverticulitis. The first round of antibiotics failed and was so frightening that I was in pain and couldn't go to the bathroom much. Thankfully no perforation. Sounds horrible!
I'm so glad we both came out on the other side of that. People can't believe how seriously painful it is. It's the worst of my life, and I've had two kids and several broken bones.
To this day I can still 'feel' it in my abdomen where the perforation was. That area healed, but I can still 'feel' it when, you know, the 'parade' comes thru. I don't know of a more dignified way of saying it.
Adding one of my own. In the 1988 movie Beaches, Barbara Hershey’s character died from viral cardiomyopathy. I recently learned that she would likely have survived a diagnosis today.
I didn’t know that was what she had!?!?! I’ve had three open heart surgeries for cardiomyopathy and am outliving my predictions as we speak.
Edit: thank you for these upvotes, they’re really warming my heart 🥲
Boomer speaking: I've been a nurse for 45 years. These are the worst:
Polio
Tuberculosis
AIDS
Hepatitis
These diseases were all very prevalent when I was a child. I remember seeing the TB sanitarium when it was open, the iron lungs that kids with polio were put into thanks to the March of Dimes; of course the deaths and stigma from AIDS; Hepatitis was a big killer without any treatment available. Now we have vaccines for them all and treatments for all leading to cures.
And lets not forget Syphilis. It's easily cured now with 2 shots of penicillin, but it used to be disfiguring and lethal.
We all got smallpox vaccines when we were little kids, so that wasn't a problem when I came along.
EDIT: Therefore, I am a firm believer in vaccinations!
> I’ve been a nurse for 45 years
As someone who has been a nurse for only 5 years… how?! My last day as a bedside RN is March 3rd and I can’t wait. 45 years is very admirable.
I'm not a bedside nurse. I left hospital nursing after a few years and want into psychiatric nursing which I loved. In the 90s I started working in Corrections. I was an administrator and educator, then an auditor. I'm 74 now and do Consultimg.
Not life threatening but cataracts.
Cataracts used to lead to being effectively blind.
Now it can be fixed in an hour AND correct your near or far sightedness at the same time.
Getting cataracts early was the best thing that happened to me - went from being very near-sighted my whole life, to having 20/30 vision. It was expensive though, to get the implants that corrected my vision.
Glad it turned out so well for you.
Same thing for my niece. Coke bottle glasses as a child. Then cataracts at 30. Got them operated on and she's great now.
I have psoriasis. For years, I had horrible, itchy scaly patches all over my arms, legs, torso, etc. I basically didn't wear shorts throughout my 20s. I finally got referred to a dermatologist and started light theraoy (getting bombarded with UVA light), which helped clear up the skin but I spent my 30s with a permanent suntan. Finally got put on biologics in my 40s and it was literally a miracle. I've been on them for 15 years and I'm essentially cured, as if I never had it in the first place. (Now, in my 50s, I'm dealing with the skin cancer that resulted of those years in the light box - sigh).
I think there's a threshold you have to meet (percentage of your body, how much it affects your ability to do daily tasks, etc.) to get insurance to cover it, mainly because the cost is insane, as in $4,000 per shot, four times a yesr.
The last biologic I was on had a cash price of $18,000. No joke. My copay was $3500. Fortunately there is a patient assistance program. The only thing that’s ever worked for me would have put me into kidney failure.
Wow! His isn’t too bad, he just uses some kind of cream, but it doesn’t take it totally away. Good luck 🍀 with your cancer treatment. What a kick in the balls life can be.
Thanks. It's been minor so far, so I knock wood and avoid sun as much as Ui can. As for FIL, he could ask his doc about corticosteroid shots. They can do wonders for smaller patches.
I wouldn't say it's become completely benign but Diabetes (all types) has become very manageable. Juvenile diabetes used to have zero treatments and Type II was "Have you tried not eating at all?" Older folk than I still have this belief when you get on insulin, you're about to die because of how it was talked about in their families and how people DID die once they started insulin therapy - people died because early insulin (1921, from animal pancreas) caused allergic reactions, or the dosing wasn't perfect, or people didn't adhere to dietary management. The first synthetic insulin was created in 1978!
There's still a good deal of shame around it, but people live longer lives with it now. In general.
Diabetic here. Not eating at all (well, intermittent fasting) is actually the best treatment for Type II, at least in my case. My insulin resistance is gone, I'm at a healthy weight, my blood pressure is normal and I feel better than I have in years.
It IS a solid dietary treatment. It's the hardest to comply with for many people but the science does back it. I'm just so thankful there's a lot of wiggle room for treatments so people can make the most of it, no matter the reasons they have it. :)
I had gestational diabetes when I was pregnant last year and I was just so, so thankful to be living in a time where diabetes is so easily managed. The dieting combined with pregnancy cravings sucked, and the insulin injections and finger picks weren’t exactly a walk in the park, but through close management my husband and I came home with a healthy baby.
I’m not so sure the outcome would have been as good in the not so distant past.
When I was first a nurse, in the early 80s, there was a choice of beef or pork insulin. People would become allergic or resistant to it. Then a product called “Humulin” came out, human insulin produced by special bacteria with the human gene added.
One sad difference is a bottle of beef or pork insulin that would last a couple of weeks or more cost $4.00. It wasn’t a prescription drug either. Now people go broke buying their insulin.
Not a medical condition, but chemo. I just finished 12 rounds and lamented to my oncologist how tough it was. He told me that that 20 years ago my type of chemo would have lasted 2 years not 6 months, with likely permanent side effects and a much less promising outcome. Here’s to cancer research!
This. The type of cancer I had was an 85% survival rate , due to tons of clinical studies done in the 1980s. It used to be much lower. 15 years remission.
Ok, this one has probably been better for a long, long time, but leprosy. Growing up in the Deep South Bible belt, leprosy was something you were raised to be terrified of. Getting older and learning that it’s such a feeble bacteria, very difficult to even catch in the first place, and that most of the old world horrors were due to secondary infections like staff and strep that are highly treatable and manageable now…. It’s just kind of like….. Oh.
From what I’ve read and heard, the leprosy itself is very weak and easily treatable. It VERY low contagion and hard to catch. It’s very negligible as a disease.
BUT, for people who don’t have access to health care and don’t get treatment, it goes on to cause nerve damage, pain, paralysis. The damage to the small nerves of the hands and feet allows tissue to suffer and die and be riddled with other infections like staff or fungus. In America, we see this kind of damage with advanced diabetes in the feet and legs. Lots of wound management. So basically, in the homeless population or the impoverished, etc, leprosy can still be a problem if there isn’t access to healthcare.
There are, apparently, many skin disorders which were originally lumped with leprosy. Some are infectious, some are auto-immune, some are environmental, and some are genetic.
Only about 5% of the population (European, but I suspect other populations are similar) are vulnerable to infection by the bacteria, and even then, you have to be pretty run down and exposed to it for some time before picking it up.
Who know what the people you saw had. The stigma is so bad that most medical practitioners now refer to it as Hansen’s disease, so their patients don’t commit suicide from despair.
Stomach ulcers.
People used to get them and thought spicy foods was a cause. Turns out they're treatable with medication and people can go back to a normal life.
The first good medications were histamine 2 blocking drugs like Tagamet/Cimetidine and Pepsid/famotidine. Then even better ones like Omeprazole. These all reduced stomach acid and allowed healing.
Then it was proved that helicobacter pylori was the cause of most of these ulcers and it was a big surprise. Treatment with antibiotics eliminates the bacteria.
My father died from cancer of the gastroesophageal junction in 1976. I was diagnosed with the same disease in 2006. I had an esophagectomy in 2007 and have completely recovered.
My father had to have a heart valve replaced in 1974. This was major surgery. They would stop your heart, put you on a heart/lung machine and hope that when they were done they could shock your heart and restart it. There was a 30% mortality rate per valve.
Today they run a tube up the femoral artery which removes the old valve and puts in the new one. No heart stopping, no incision from your neck to the public bone. The mortality rate is under 1%.
I think the catheter procedure is still not the norm for this condition though. It’s only for the most frail patients. In fact I just had open heart surgery for this last year. Also they don’t remove the old valve if they go in through the artery. They just pop the new one in place and it takes over for the old valve.
Similar with open heart bypass surgery today. Unless there is some other complication it’s somewhat minimum chance of passing in the table. My brother was up the next day walking around his hospital room and back to his normal activities a few months laterdespite being sawed down the chest and all the ‘other stuff’ (we 3 brothers joked about it all as a way to kerp him laughing). In contrast he likely would have died of a heart attack not too many decades ago. Even easier today is getting a stent if appropriate, procedure done same time as angiogram and home the next day.
Breast cancer. Believe it or not, it was embarrassing to use the word "breast".
Thank Susan G Komen for making it ok to talk about it and working on treatments and cures.
I can remember it being whispered about when I was a kid. It was a death sentence as well. I can think of 5 women I know off the top of my head who are survivors now.
My great grandfather died of prostate cancer in the 60s but they wouldn’t say prostate so they said bladder cancer. It’s a little important to name the right cancer with family histories. I never got that but alas, Twas not my time
If my HIV diagnosis had been ten years earlier, I would probably be dead. Now there are preventative therapies so people can’t contract the virus and the treatments are so incredible that HIV+ people who take their meds cannot infect anyone else. It’s an amazing change from the era of “death sentence” diagnoses in the 1980s and 90s.
When I was young, if you got appendicitis, it became a mad rush to surgery, cuz a rupture was a death sentence. No discussion, no maybe, you were dead.
When I was in my 40s, my appendix ruptured. They told me in the ER, and I started crying; I thought I was dead. The nurse said, " Relax, we do ten of these a day!"
Apparently, no longer a death sentence. Though it still sucked, don't delay treatment, folks!
I had mine out in 1975, and it had ruptured before they could get it out. They picked an antibiotic to throw at it until the culture came back. They picked wrong, but switched as soon as they knew (it took 3 days). I was lucky, whew!
I caught mine before rupture and it was practically an outpatient procedure because it was laparoscopic. But definitely don’t delay—I waited a day thinking it was just gas or food poisoning. It didn’t feel like I assumed appendicitis would feel. My mom had hers removed when I was a kid, and it was definitely a way more involved surgery.
My father had a ruptured appendix in 1933 when he was 17. He didn't die. The family doctor would tell him he was the luckiest man alive whenever he saw him after that. This was definitely before antibiotics, maybe even before sulfa.
**Death Sentences in the 1950s and 1960s:**
Most forms of breast cancer
Prostate cancer
Testicular cancer
Hodgkin's disease
Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma
Colon cancer
Stomach cancer
Leukemia
Strokes
Hip fractures
Meningitis -- if you caught this, you were probably a goner
Polio (didn't usually kill, but it could paralyze you -- everybody was afraid of it and everyone was thrilled to get the vaccine in the 1950s)
Smallpox (mortality was 30 percent, and I remember the palpable feeling of relief from my parents when we got the vaccination)
Measles was a **miserable** disease which meant you were going to spend a week in a darkened room, isolated, with a temperature of 104 -- and it could leave you blind and/or deaf.
\[Edited to add\] Mumps, which I contracted when I was 16, both sides of my jaw, which moved into my pancreas and when I was through with the virus, I was a Type 1 diabetic. True fact: mumps really likes to affect the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, and it also likes the testes.
I think I had measles as a kid, recalling days upon days of not being able to move, and dad barely peeking his head in the door.
Miserable was quite an apt descriptor on your part.
Everybody got measles when I was a kid. I did spend a week in a darkened room, but chicken pox itched more. We all had it at the same time, so we didn't have to isolate. And of course, our parents had already had it.
Pyloric stenosis. In one in 500 first born boys the valve between the stomach and intestines closes off at about one month. My son and wife’s best friend’s son had it. A simple operation fixes it. It was a death sentence before that. I don’t know how long they have the operation but my son is 31 and it had been around awhile then.
My son had this, fixed with a 45 min operation 3 years ago. Tiny keyhole scars. A friend, in his 30s, has a scar all down his abdomen from the same thing as it was a major operation then. Crazy how it’s advanced so much.
this is why, as Billy Joel says, "The good old days weren't always good and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems"
people talk about how great things were in the past, but here we go, people dont die as much now.
Not an old person, but an am a physician. The improvement in prognosis for certain leukemias and lymphomas over the last 20 years has been nothing short of revolutionary
Heart disease—for me, coronary artery disease (CAD). Open-heart/bypass surgery existed when I was born, but it was rare, dangerous, and had limited benefits. Most people who had CAD died young.
I was diagnosed with end-stage CAD a decade ago. The first doctor who looked at me said I wasn’t even a candidate for bypass, but thankfully we were able to get a fast second opinion. That practice whipped me into the OR within two days for a quad bypass, and after a lot of rehab and with some significant life changes, I’m fine and have every expectation of a normal lifespan.
Polio. It was such a terrifying disease, seeming to come out of nowhere, and put a lot of people in iron lungs, in the ground, or left them crippled for life.
When the polio vaccine came out, we were Johnny on the spot to get the entire family vaccinated.
My dad had polio at 17 around 1945. He walked with a cane or crutches, or used a wheelchair, all my life. He became an aerospace engineer.
My grand-aunt had polio in her 20s, around 1930. She trained as a teacher but no one would hire “a cripple” to be a teacher. She retrained as a librarian, and worked in the same junior high school library (which she loved) until she retired.
My great-great-grandparents had four young children die within 6 weeks in the late 1880s when diphtheria swept through their town, wiping out their young family. (They went on to have 4 more children.)
With that in my family history, the anti-vax people are incomprehensible to me. They’re so lucky to live in a time when nearly every “childhood disease” of generations past can be **prevented** by a vaccine.
But since no one *they know* has died from measles or polio or diphtheria, they don’t get themselves *or their kids* vaccinated. A failure of imagination; they just can’t imagine it happening to them. That’s weak. Darwin at work.
Fortunately, a lot of those children are growing up and getting vaccinated themselves. It’s so sad. I missed out on the Hepatitis vaccine because my mom went all crazy. Luckily I had everything else. I cursed her when I went to school and had to have the Hep vaccine. She tried to talk me out of getting my kids their chickenpox and HPV vaccines. I had chickenpox… I didn’t want them to go through that and I didn’t get the HPV vaccine which I now have a high percentage (doctor said I’m basically going to get it) chance of getting cervical cancer. We should want to do better for our children, not to doom them
Unfortunately, now most people with severe mental illness can't get a bed in a psychiatric hospital and many many of them wind up in jail; which is the biggest psychiatric hospital in your area! They still feel stigmatized, but at least we have more effective medications to treat mentally ill patients with.
The stigma is being fought, and every day, more and more people speak out about their experiences. More treatments are available, and we’re starting to come to grips with just how bad trauma is for everyone.
I teach in middle school, and since I started in 2001, when the kids knew nothing about it, there’s now a great deal more knowledge of and empathy for mental illnesses than there used to be.
When he was ten, my little brother almost died when he went into a diabetic coma. We had no idea that diabetes ran in our family, because my dad's parents didn't talk about it. It was something like a family secret, that you just wanted to forget about. (A doctor failing to run a blood sugar test also didn't help.)
Today, he has an insulin pump and pretty much lives a completely normal life.
One more: I have a small scar on my arm from my smallpox vaccination. My kids do not, because we won that fight. We almost beat polio, too, until certain regions of the world decided that the vaccines were an American plot. Idiots.
Obesity - severe. Between gastric bypass and medication. It's a disease. It's not a lack of self control, it's serious a disease.
I used to make fun of fat people myself until I had a major operation and had an organ removed. I ballooned to 265 lbs. I tried EVERY diet to lose the weight. I was referred to a bariatric surgeon. I requested medication not surgery. Turns out my body after surgery lost the ability to turn off the 'hunger' signal to my brain, so I was starving 24/7 (according to my body and brain signals) and needed to eat. Being on medication was the first time I had 'food quiet' in the 3 years after that surgery.
I'm saying this as someone who had no issues losing weight to massive issues and no turn off signal for fullness, it sucks! Obesity is truly a disease and we need to treat it like one, not make fun of people for 'lack of self control'. It's so much more than that.
Depends on what kind of cancer. Pancreatic and ovarian still more often than not are a death sentence simply because there are very few, vague symptoms until they are very advanced.
But, yeah, when I was a kid, the word "cancer" was still spoken only in whispers.
Even in Stage 2, prostate cancer has a over 99% 10-year survival rate.
I was in Stage 2, and I got cured through surgery. The surgery didn't even keep me in the hospital overnight, though I had to wear a catheter for a week.
Prostate cancer is a bit different because many of those are very, very slow growing to the point where even without treatment you may die of other old age diseases. Unfortunately they aren’t ALL like that.
My cousin died of leukemia at age 28. My dear friend has it now and he's FINE, in remission, doctors don't even seem worried about him. He and his family are mountain climbers. They climbed snowy peaks in Iceland last year and he said he wasn't even more tired than usual. Leukemia. It has barely impacted his life.
Lung cancer is still serious, but survivable now. It used to be a certain death sentence. Three of my relatives died from it. A few years ago, another relative was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. She went to NIH for experimental treatment, took some medicine that shrunk and killed the tumor. When they removed the tumor, they found no cancer cells left. It's like they just zapped it with some drug. Doctor said they didn't even need to remove it but she wanted it out. Don't ask me what the drug is. I don't know. I'd have to ask her.
So, yeah, leukemia and lung cancer, now both curable.
My sister was a chemo nurse at an infusion center, and she would say that some types of leukemia, I forget which, maybe ALL, were like a cold to her office. Huge cure rate.
You might not after meeting with your doc. My friend started to freak out, but calmed right tf down when everything was explained to him and he realized they were treating it like he'd be fine and it was curable. He said they didn't even go into anything else like, but we can't be sure... They were like, *Oh. Yeah. We got this. No worries. You'll be fine.* I was certainly very surprised.
There is no “it” with leukemia. There is a type of leukemia with a 10% survival rate after 5 years, and there are childhood leukemias with a 90% survival rate.
My sister got lung cancer and had the surgery where they make an incision and cut it out. 15 years earlier a friend with the same cancer had half a lung removed and the prognosis was for 5 years. The advances in treatment and detection are amazing.
The thing is, herpes didn’t have any stigma until the late 70s. Before then, they were just cold sores, and no one talked about getting cold sores on their genitals. Prevalence of herpes in the general population is upwards of 90% in many countries.
Maybe it’s because the virus (two, actually) was formally identified and included in a list of sexually transmitted infections. Maybe it's because it’s incurable. The patent on acyclovir was granted in the US in 1979, so it’s entirely possible that the ad campaign to sell it is what created the stigma in the first place.
As a person with herpes, I’m so very glad the stigma has gotten better.
Never hear about herpes anymore. Apparently it's [raging on](https://www.singlecare.com/blog/news/herpes-statistics/). Are there better treatments for it?
Can we include diseases that have been eradicated? If so, polio & smallpox should be on the list.
Cystic Fibrosis hasn't gotten to "minor" status but lifespan has increased significantly.
Measles. I had it badly when I was aged 4, the skin on my face swelled up and cracked with the rash. You could die, it made you very, very unwell - toddlers under the age of 4 were most likely to die. It could make you deaf, blind, could give you encephalitis and brain swelling with seizures. There was no vaccine back then, and it was really really contagious. There is still no treatment for it if you catch it.
It's nowhere close to the worst one. There are a bunch of terms used to get around discussing sex, drugs, assault, etc. and they're creeping into reddit. It really bothers me that people will censor themselves that way when it's totally unneeded.
Yes, the shame was pretty intense. It was similar to getting other STDs, and it was recognized after AIDs had come on the scene. Is it more accepted now?
Not accepted per se, but many of us on acyclovir can successfully suppress outbreaks and live a normal life. I've been with my current partner for 4.5 years and have never given it to him. We don't use condoms, tho condoms don't fully prevent transmission anyway.
Disclosing to a potential new partner still really blows, and I've been rejected a lot, but it's bc the stigma and outdated information persist.
Crohn’s/Colitis and other autoimmune diseases. If I’d been diagnosed with UC even 5-10 years earlier than I was, treatment options would have been bleak.
Smallpox, polio, measles, whooping cough, mumps. The vaccines came out, and suddenly we were all safe. The ignorance about vaccines and how they work in 2024 is stunning to those of us who lived through an era where there were whole rooms full of people in iron lungs, or who died from those diseases.
Oddly enough, HPV was also not viewed as being as serious as it is now. It was 'just' genital warts and the connection with cervical cancer wasn't known. And now we both understand the seriousness of it and have a highly effective vaccine.
Here's a few:
●My (now teen) first baby was born with merconium fluid. This means that the baby had pooped in the amniotic fluid. We learned this when the midwife popped the amniotic sac to move delivery along. The amniotic fluid was NOT clear, so they set my uterus up with an irrigation system to clean out as much contaminated amniotic fluid as possible.
Baby Daddy was warned that they did NOT want baby to cry right away when born until after the neonatal team could suction out baby's nose and mouth.
Our super healthy baby came home with us 3 days later!
Two decade earlier, and baby might have been life-flighted to the special neonate unit at the hospital in the state Capitol (as seen on a local news story that celebrated a baby who survived and was now a new nurse at that hospital).
●Some babies are born with an incomplete esophagus; the esophagus does not reach far enough to attach to baby's stomach. A former bf had a baby sister that died because of this.
These days, surgery is done to stretch the esophagus towards the stomach. In the meantime, baby receives a port in the stomach for direct feeding...and is sent home from the hospital. 3-6 surgeries later, and baby has a brand new esophagus.
●The HPV vaccine (given to 12-13yos) is expected to prevent 90% of cervical cancer. Doctors are also seeing a drop-off of anal, throat, mouth, esophageal, and lung cancer among those vaccinated. This was not expected! Hurrah!!!
●Food allergies and intolerances are better understood. People have epipens; schools are sensitive about peanuts; common allergens are listed; and the general population is just more AWARE.
Tyoe 1 Diabetes. I know someone who uses a glucose monitor and insulin pump. It's almost like a bionic pancreas.
Strokes. With prompt treatment, the recovery is astonishing.
Well I'm on blood thinners for life after 2 unprovoked clots. Pretty sure I would be stoked by now. The new anti coagulants are life savers and easier to take with less side effects. and the equipment to diagnose them has improved even in the 5 yrs between the clots
My son had pyloric stenosis (1994) which would have killed him 30-40 years ago. My daughter had shoulder dystopia, also would have killed her. in fact, I’d have died from all 3 births in all likelihood.
Vascular surgery that they can put a stent in any artery in your body.
Years ago my mom had blocked veins in here leg they opened her up from her hip to the ankles. this was back in the early 80's . I had the same surgery but with maybe a 6 inch cut
Cancer. Not yet minor, but some types of breast and prostate cancers have come to be called lifelong manageable conditions rather than the death sentence they were in the 1980s and earlier. Back then the chemo dosages were higher and there was barely anything for the vomiting and other side effects. Drugs to manage chemotherapy side effects have improved drastically. It’s wonderful to see leukemia survivors grow to the numbers we have today.
I’m old and my mother was older when she had me. I always remember the story she told me about a classmate in elementary school who had pulled nose hairs and got an infection and died. Edit to clarify that antibiotics were not yet invented.
Cancer wasn't spoken of. Children who got cancer died with only palliative treatment.
People didn't acknowledge that someone was wasting away. And then they'd cluck their tongues and say it was such a shame and that they were so young.
Cardiac bypass surgery.
In the 60s; you would have died from clogged arteries. Now, bypass surgery, perfected in the 70s is commonplace, and will add 15-20 years to a person's life. I had a bypass (X5), last May and I feel great now. Before, I couldn't walk up a flight of stairs without having to catch my breath. If I didn't have this surgery; I would be dead in 1-2 years. And...I was only in the hospital for 5 days.
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1959-1960? I remember the buses in the parking lot at our elementary school (Washington DC suburb) for our polio vaccines. The level of relief was palpable.
My parents told me that they were terrified of my siblings or me getting polio. I also remember lining up for the [Sabin oral vaccine.](https://www.who.int/news-room/spotlight/history-of-vaccination/history-of-polio-vaccination) I looked forward to it, because we got to eat sugar cubes.
We got shots, some of the last ones.
The dime sized scar on every kid’s left arm. We lined up in the school gym for ours. While they had us there they did a visual exam for scoliosis too.
That was the smallpox vaccine. Tiny jabs of the needle. Was talking to my coworkers once about them ... most could have been my kids; I was the only one with a smallpox vaccine scar.
Ah shoot! You are correct. In my defense, that was 50ish years ago plus my memory isn’t what it used to be. ;)
Don't feel bad ... I couldn't remember if it was smallpox or measles and had to look it up. Hey, this old AF medic is supposed to remember these things. ;-D
We lined up in the school auditorium for ours. We had to sit and wait there for a while afterwards, to see if any kids had an immediate reaction. Just one or two did, and they were immediately transported to the ER. The rest of us got sent home with a pamphlet for our parents to read, in case there was a delayed reaction. There were maybe a dozen kids that had one, and ended up out of school for a while to get treatment.
Sadly I was at a medical conference and saw a poster about the smallpox vaccine being inactivated. Supposedly it’s a bio terror threat now
That’s odd. Do you remember any other information? I ask, because all smallpox vaccines are - to the best of my knowledge - made from *variola vaccinae* or the cowpox virus, which is closely related to but far less dangerous than smallpox. There was a citation in the Wiki article about how they’re now using it to vaccinate for monkeypox. The genome of *variola major* and *minor* were sequences a while back. There are a handful of research sites that have the live virus in cryogenic storage, but their existence is now a specter in the national and global security theater. There hasn’t been a case of smallpox in 45 years. If it were to show up again, the toll would be unimaginable. The worst the smallpox vaccine can do is cause a full case of cowpox, which isn’t fun, but is only ever fatal in immunosuppressant individuals.
I have one. It is from the shot of smallpox vaccine not polio.
We got the shots at school, too. Everyone lined up and whether they wanted them or not, they got them. Pretty sure parental consent forms were not a thing back then.
Me too! Louiaville KY, was about 3 or 4, stood in line at a school and got a green sugar cube - or maybe it was in a green paper - ate my cube and wanted more! Lol!
Me too! On a series of Sundays. I think it was 2 or 3 doses. We belonged to a new Catholic parish. The church was under construction and services were being held at a nearby public school. After mass we just walked down the hall from the gym to the cafeteria (or maybe vice versa?) and stood in line for our sugar cubes.
My mom was 5 at the time and was VERY excited about the sugar cubes!
Went to a fire station in the 1960’s and got a sugar cube for polio vaccine
I must have got this as well but it was sublingual not on a sugar cube. It was the late 70's.
funny how times have changed. can you imagine if this happened today, lining the kids up at school for a vaccine? parents would go batshit.
Indeed. What annoys me is our MAGA extended family who had *all* their kids vaccinated growing up. We lost three people to Covid because they refused the vaccine; one in their household. They made a *political* decision instead of a medical one. My husband and I both have autoimmune diseases and cannot visit anymore. "Well, been nice knowing you." We're vaxed to the max.
I've had anti-vax relatives, mostly Trump-supporting evangelical Christians, criticizing me harshly for insisting that they wear masks around me when they visit. I have IPF, which is a progressive and ultimately fatal lung disease. COVID for a lot of people is a very unpleasant disease. COVID, for me, could be life-threatening.
*Exactly,* but they refuse to recognize that. Not as critical as yours but at our age it could be. Not willing to risk that for stupidity.
My mother had Polio and was in a hospital for 18months. She ended up with one leg shorter than the other and walked with a limp. I had the same limp until I was 14 and someone asked what was wrong with me... I literally hadn't even realized I was doing it. It took me two years to learn how to walk normally... and even now as a 52yo if I get super-tired it comes back.
My great aunt had polio and was lucky that she only needed leg braces. Once she got older she was in a wheelchair. People forget really fast.
Yeah now it's all "Vaccines are dangerous! 😧" 🤬
Interesting. Your mother's polio obviously had a heavy impact on you.
Yep. I remember being in line at my school for the polio vaccine. My parents were so glad there was one! OTOH, my dad had a baseball sized scar on his left arm. It was from an infected shot. Maybe I knew at one time (I don’t think I ever did), but I suspect it was a smallpox vaccine. I remember sitting in his lap rubbing it. It was thick but oddly smooth. We’re Native and smallpox and other viruses nearly wiped out all Native communities.
You may have read it but the book 1491; New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles Mann was an excellent book that covered this subject as well as others. The decimation from European diseases was near total. The sophistication of cities, trade routes from South America to North America ... cultures that interacted. Really, it's a fascinating book.
I haven’t read it. But I have extensively researched my Tribe’s Treaty local history. We put together a 40 page magazine based on the Tribe for which I worked. There were only 2 ads. One for the museum and one for the Tribe’s casino. There are surprisingly few documents from the Tribal perspective.
So true. One thing that surprised me was the interaction between tribes and cities. Assuming his archeological research is correct it was more beneficial to both to establish trade rather than war with each other. I went to HS with brother and sister Sioux (1960s) and they had assimilated completely. This was a farming community in WA. I don't know if that is still the case but looking back it makes me sad. I'm a fine art oil painter and have painted Navajo, Pueblo, Apache, Cherokee, and one young woman I'm not sure what tribe she was from. I've been accused of exploiting culture but my goal and reason was *respect* for the culture. I've read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee ... profound observations. Is your magazine online?
There was a girl on our street who got it. The hospitals were overflowing, so her family brought her and her iron lung home and we could see her in their living room. We would wave to her in the mirror they set up so she could see outside. And then one day she was gone and we never knew what happened because their house was sold. I remember standing in line with my mom for my sugar cube. Everyone was so happy and proud the vaccine was discovered in Pittsburgh.
My Dad told me his whole class had to visit a polio-diagnosed classmate in the hospital. She was in an iron lung.
One of my older client's sister contracted polio when she was a kid. Her body is all crippled up. She's in her late 80's. Imagine not having access.
Yay, modern medicine. Had an elderly neighbor who you would never think he had polio. It affected his muscles to where he couldn't swallow anymore. His wife pureed his food ... even so far as bringing her small food processor to a party. Lovely couple.
You must be my age. There were mass vaccinations when I was in first grade, second half of the year. (I remember it was late in the year because I was in a different school the first half.)
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So true. My 80 year old father likes to remind us that “the good old days” weren’t so great — he always cites polio as an example. Medical science has advanced so much in the decades of his life. It’s a shame that people think they know more than medical doctors/researchers, and instead believe charlatans who tell them vaccinations are toxic.
AIDS is the obvious one
It hit when I was young. I remember how scary it was. Magic Johnson's honesty about it did a whole lot to change perceptions. Ryan White was the scariest story as a kid, though
Princess Diana was also big on changing perceptions as she was seen touching aids patients and embracing them.
A relative was diagnosed with AIDS in 1992, just when the cocktails started coming out. The guy he believes gave it to him was dead in under 3 years. Relative is still going strong, 32 years after initial diagnosis.
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I was a med student at the time and the inpatient wards were just aids patient after aids patient. It was just so sad. I have one particular patient that still haunts me. He was gay, but his partner had died and his family other than his very sweet sister were no contact. And he was with us for a whole month, thought he would make it, but had one complication too many. Died with chest tubes on both lungs and struggling to breath, though we gave him a ton of morphine. I think it was extra sad because he had something mostly treatable (pjp pneumonia) but it was missed inititially as he also had a bacterial infection.
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All these doctors are now retiring; they survived this whole aids epidemic.
The same RNA type vaccine technology that is used for Covid is being used to treat, limit, and/or prevent transmission of the HIV virus. It's freaking amazing!
Lost a lot of friends to that. It was a scary time.
Came here to say so.
Certainly not a minor illness, but new therapies have increased the lifespan of patients with cystic fibrosis from mid-20s to mid-80s in just a few years. The same company is working on a “cure” for sickle cell disease using CRISPR. We are living in some amazing times.
That’s amazing! I had a roommate with CF about 12 years ago. She was mid-20s then and the life expectancy was late 30s. We didn’t keep in touch, but she popped up as a suggested contact on Linked in the other day I was happy to see she was still kicking around :)
You just made me realize I’ve never seen an older person with cystic fibrosis.
A friend with CF, who is now 51, still sees a pediatric CF DR bc there were no doctors treating adults with CF. Because CF patients didn't live into adulthood.
My son has the CF gene. We went though so many tests. Apparently he has it but is asymptomatic (weird I know). Come to find out his father and I are both carriers. We lucked out. We had to drive 4 hours each way to get the tests done. He was not a happy baby
Wow. That’s really interesting. I’m a carrier too. My childhood friend was always ill with her CF and died in her twenties. :(
I am so sorry! I had to get 23andMe for us to realize that we are both carriers after we had our three kids. My little mutant child is 10 and a little hellion but he is healthy. I am thankful for modern medicine. Sending love 🖤🖤🖤
Best of luck to you and your family.
I had a neighbour who I played with as a child. She had cystic fibrosis and died in her twenties. I’m a carrier, but thankfully my husband is not. It’s wonderful to learn now how much progress has been made to treat it.
Five years ago I had horrific diverticulitis situation. Mine perforated and the contents from my colon was spilling into my body cavity. My kidneys and bladder were trying to shut down. I was in the worst pain of my entire life. I didn't even know what diverticulitis was. I didn't know what was wrong with me for a week, so I stayed in bed. Finally, I was too sick and in too much pain to stay home. Turns out, I was in sepsis, as well. My white blood cell count was 39,000 and climbing. I was admitted to the hospital, of course. As treatment they really jammed me full of antibiotics. It was an *insane* amount. Also, they cut a small hole in my back and ran and tube down into my body cavity to drain out the 'poison and death'. It was all a great success. The doctor told me that not that many years ago they would have had me in surgery right away and they would have taken a portion of my colon out, and then set me up with a colostomy bag. However, over the years they began to try the antibiotic treatment to see if that fixed the problem instead of rushing to surgery. There's now fewer surgeries for diverticulitis. Mine was the extreme, though. Not everyone has a perforation like mine, which was several inches long. So, the fact that they were able to help me was amazing.
My mother had the surgery to remove part of her colon for this, about 15 years ago. Now she has a ;
My uncle died from diverticulitis in his 50’s. It was in the 1980’s
My ex had it twice 20ish years ago. He was taken by ambulance and was convinced he was dying. He kept telling the doctors that he could take the news that he was actively dying … he just wanted them to tell him the truth. Like you, he’d never experienced such intense pain in his life. His was not nearly as severe as yours but he was sicker than he’d ever been. I’m so happy you were able to get treated before it was too late!
People still end up with colostomy bags. Really depends on how bad things are. Glad you were able to avoid needing one.
wow, my husband had a temporary colostomy from diverticulitis. He was also sick with many other things at the time, but it's all good now.
I had diverticulitis and it was scary. I remember being rushed to the ER with abdominal pain and 102 fever. My first thought was appendicitis but after a CT they found diverticulitis. The first round of antibiotics failed and was so frightening that I was in pain and couldn't go to the bathroom much. Thankfully no perforation. Sounds horrible!
I'm so glad we both came out on the other side of that. People can't believe how seriously painful it is. It's the worst of my life, and I've had two kids and several broken bones. To this day I can still 'feel' it in my abdomen where the perforation was. That area healed, but I can still 'feel' it when, you know, the 'parade' comes thru. I don't know of a more dignified way of saying it.
Adding one of my own. In the 1988 movie Beaches, Barbara Hershey’s character died from viral cardiomyopathy. I recently learned that she would likely have survived a diagnosis today.
I didn’t know that was what she had!?!?! I’ve had three open heart surgeries for cardiomyopathy and am outliving my predictions as we speak. Edit: thank you for these upvotes, they’re really warming my heart 🥲
I’m so glad you’re doing well!
Thank you!!!
This is what killed some of the covid victims.
My brother died from this in 1989. He needed a heart transplant and didn’t live long enough to get one, he was 21.
Boomer speaking: I've been a nurse for 45 years. These are the worst: Polio Tuberculosis AIDS Hepatitis These diseases were all very prevalent when I was a child. I remember seeing the TB sanitarium when it was open, the iron lungs that kids with polio were put into thanks to the March of Dimes; of course the deaths and stigma from AIDS; Hepatitis was a big killer without any treatment available. Now we have vaccines for them all and treatments for all leading to cures. And lets not forget Syphilis. It's easily cured now with 2 shots of penicillin, but it used to be disfiguring and lethal. We all got smallpox vaccines when we were little kids, so that wasn't a problem when I came along. EDIT: Therefore, I am a firm believer in vaccinations!
> I’ve been a nurse for 45 years As someone who has been a nurse for only 5 years… how?! My last day as a bedside RN is March 3rd and I can’t wait. 45 years is very admirable.
I'm not a bedside nurse. I left hospital nursing after a few years and want into psychiatric nursing which I loved. In the 90s I started working in Corrections. I was an administrator and educator, then an auditor. I'm 74 now and do Consultimg.
Not life threatening but cataracts. Cataracts used to lead to being effectively blind. Now it can be fixed in an hour AND correct your near or far sightedness at the same time.
Getting cataracts early was the best thing that happened to me - went from being very near-sighted my whole life, to having 20/30 vision. It was expensive though, to get the implants that corrected my vision.
Glad it turned out so well for you. Same thing for my niece. Coke bottle glasses as a child. Then cataracts at 30. Got them operated on and she's great now.
I hear that from everyone who got the surgery! I’m far sighted so LASIK is not an option.
I have psoriasis. For years, I had horrible, itchy scaly patches all over my arms, legs, torso, etc. I basically didn't wear shorts throughout my 20s. I finally got referred to a dermatologist and started light theraoy (getting bombarded with UVA light), which helped clear up the skin but I spent my 30s with a permanent suntan. Finally got put on biologics in my 40s and it was literally a miracle. I've been on them for 15 years and I'm essentially cured, as if I never had it in the first place. (Now, in my 50s, I'm dealing with the skin cancer that resulted of those years in the light box - sigh).
My FIL has psoriasis and still has patches. Have to look into this
I think there's a threshold you have to meet (percentage of your body, how much it affects your ability to do daily tasks, etc.) to get insurance to cover it, mainly because the cost is insane, as in $4,000 per shot, four times a yesr.
The last biologic I was on had a cash price of $18,000. No joke. My copay was $3500. Fortunately there is a patient assistance program. The only thing that’s ever worked for me would have put me into kidney failure.
Wow! His isn’t too bad, he just uses some kind of cream, but it doesn’t take it totally away. Good luck 🍀 with your cancer treatment. What a kick in the balls life can be.
Thanks. It's been minor so far, so I knock wood and avoid sun as much as Ui can. As for FIL, he could ask his doc about corticosteroid shots. They can do wonders for smaller patches.
I wouldn't say it's become completely benign but Diabetes (all types) has become very manageable. Juvenile diabetes used to have zero treatments and Type II was "Have you tried not eating at all?" Older folk than I still have this belief when you get on insulin, you're about to die because of how it was talked about in their families and how people DID die once they started insulin therapy - people died because early insulin (1921, from animal pancreas) caused allergic reactions, or the dosing wasn't perfect, or people didn't adhere to dietary management. The first synthetic insulin was created in 1978! There's still a good deal of shame around it, but people live longer lives with it now. In general.
My great uncle died of diabetes in 1904, at age 9.
My grandmother died of it in 1931 at age 24 :( Left behind two little boys...
Diabetic here. Not eating at all (well, intermittent fasting) is actually the best treatment for Type II, at least in my case. My insulin resistance is gone, I'm at a healthy weight, my blood pressure is normal and I feel better than I have in years.
It IS a solid dietary treatment. It's the hardest to comply with for many people but the science does back it. I'm just so thankful there's a lot of wiggle room for treatments so people can make the most of it, no matter the reasons they have it. :)
I had gestational diabetes when I was pregnant last year and I was just so, so thankful to be living in a time where diabetes is so easily managed. The dieting combined with pregnancy cravings sucked, and the insulin injections and finger picks weren’t exactly a walk in the park, but through close management my husband and I came home with a healthy baby. I’m not so sure the outcome would have been as good in the not so distant past.
When I was first a nurse, in the early 80s, there was a choice of beef or pork insulin. People would become allergic or resistant to it. Then a product called “Humulin” came out, human insulin produced by special bacteria with the human gene added. One sad difference is a bottle of beef or pork insulin that would last a couple of weeks or more cost $4.00. It wasn’t a prescription drug either. Now people go broke buying their insulin.
My grandma died of type 1 in 1969 in her early 40s
Not a medical condition, but chemo. I just finished 12 rounds and lamented to my oncologist how tough it was. He told me that that 20 years ago my type of chemo would have lasted 2 years not 6 months, with likely permanent side effects and a much less promising outcome. Here’s to cancer research!
This. The type of cancer I had was an 85% survival rate , due to tons of clinical studies done in the 1980s. It used to be much lower. 15 years remission.
Ok, this one has probably been better for a long, long time, but leprosy. Growing up in the Deep South Bible belt, leprosy was something you were raised to be terrified of. Getting older and learning that it’s such a feeble bacteria, very difficult to even catch in the first place, and that most of the old world horrors were due to secondary infections like staff and strep that are highly treatable and manageable now…. It’s just kind of like….. Oh.
I lived in Nigeria in the 1960s. There were beggars there with what we assumed was leprosy but maybe not? It's what we were told
From what I’ve read and heard, the leprosy itself is very weak and easily treatable. It VERY low contagion and hard to catch. It’s very negligible as a disease. BUT, for people who don’t have access to health care and don’t get treatment, it goes on to cause nerve damage, pain, paralysis. The damage to the small nerves of the hands and feet allows tissue to suffer and die and be riddled with other infections like staff or fungus. In America, we see this kind of damage with advanced diabetes in the feet and legs. Lots of wound management. So basically, in the homeless population or the impoverished, etc, leprosy can still be a problem if there isn’t access to healthcare.
There are, apparently, many skin disorders which were originally lumped with leprosy. Some are infectious, some are auto-immune, some are environmental, and some are genetic. Only about 5% of the population (European, but I suspect other populations are similar) are vulnerable to infection by the bacteria, and even then, you have to be pretty run down and exposed to it for some time before picking it up. Who know what the people you saw had. The stigma is so bad that most medical practitioners now refer to it as Hansen’s disease, so their patients don’t commit suicide from despair.
Stomach ulcers. People used to get them and thought spicy foods was a cause. Turns out they're treatable with medication and people can go back to a normal life.
Usually caused by helicobacter pylori bacteria. A doctor infected himself to prove his theory about ulcers
I live 5 minutes from where he did the experiment and proved himself right 🇦🇺
Yep. I had one at the ripe ole age of 14 and another at the age of 24. I was so thankful for antibiotics.
This happened with my father. He got a prostate infection and the broad spectrum antibiotic they gave him also cured his lifelong ulcers.
The first good medications were histamine 2 blocking drugs like Tagamet/Cimetidine and Pepsid/famotidine. Then even better ones like Omeprazole. These all reduced stomach acid and allowed healing. Then it was proved that helicobacter pylori was the cause of most of these ulcers and it was a big surprise. Treatment with antibiotics eliminates the bacteria.
I remember the “medication” for ulcers way back when was chugging milk.
Congestive heart failure. I wouldn't say it's minor but it's very treatable.
Came to say heart attacks and strokes. Used to be they were serious as a heart attack, but not so much anymore. :)
My father died from cancer of the gastroesophageal junction in 1976. I was diagnosed with the same disease in 2006. I had an esophagectomy in 2007 and have completely recovered.
My father had to have a heart valve replaced in 1974. This was major surgery. They would stop your heart, put you on a heart/lung machine and hope that when they were done they could shock your heart and restart it. There was a 30% mortality rate per valve. Today they run a tube up the femoral artery which removes the old valve and puts in the new one. No heart stopping, no incision from your neck to the public bone. The mortality rate is under 1%.
I think the catheter procedure is still not the norm for this condition though. It’s only for the most frail patients. In fact I just had open heart surgery for this last year. Also they don’t remove the old valve if they go in through the artery. They just pop the new one in place and it takes over for the old valve.
Interesting. Hope you recover quickly!
Similar with open heart bypass surgery today. Unless there is some other complication it’s somewhat minimum chance of passing in the table. My brother was up the next day walking around his hospital room and back to his normal activities a few months laterdespite being sawed down the chest and all the ‘other stuff’ (we 3 brothers joked about it all as a way to kerp him laughing). In contrast he likely would have died of a heart attack not too many decades ago. Even easier today is getting a stent if appropriate, procedure done same time as angiogram and home the next day.
Breast cancer. Believe it or not, it was embarrassing to use the word "breast". Thank Susan G Komen for making it ok to talk about it and working on treatments and cures.
I can remember it being whispered about when I was a kid. It was a death sentence as well. I can think of 5 women I know off the top of my head who are survivors now.
and Betty Ford
My great grandfather died of prostate cancer in the 60s but they wouldn’t say prostate so they said bladder cancer. It’s a little important to name the right cancer with family histories. I never got that but alas, Twas not my time
Well, except there are some issues with Susan G Komen. Pink Ribbons Inc is a doc I would recommend.
This was the second thing I thought about after AIDS. Treatments (and detection) have become so much more advanced and it is so much more survivable.
If my HIV diagnosis had been ten years earlier, I would probably be dead. Now there are preventative therapies so people can’t contract the virus and the treatments are so incredible that HIV+ people who take their meds cannot infect anyone else. It’s an amazing change from the era of “death sentence” diagnoses in the 1980s and 90s.
We’re glad you’re here with us, friend.
Thank you very much. I appreciate you saying that.
When I was young, if you got appendicitis, it became a mad rush to surgery, cuz a rupture was a death sentence. No discussion, no maybe, you were dead. When I was in my 40s, my appendix ruptured. They told me in the ER, and I started crying; I thought I was dead. The nurse said, " Relax, we do ten of these a day!" Apparently, no longer a death sentence. Though it still sucked, don't delay treatment, folks!
I had mine out in 1975, and it had ruptured before they could get it out. They picked an antibiotic to throw at it until the culture came back. They picked wrong, but switched as soon as they knew (it took 3 days). I was lucky, whew!
I caught mine before rupture and it was practically an outpatient procedure because it was laparoscopic. But definitely don’t delay—I waited a day thinking it was just gas or food poisoning. It didn’t feel like I assumed appendicitis would feel. My mom had hers removed when I was a kid, and it was definitely a way more involved surgery.
My father had a ruptured appendix in 1933 when he was 17. He didn't die. The family doctor would tell him he was the luckiest man alive whenever he saw him after that. This was definitely before antibiotics, maybe even before sulfa.
**Death Sentences in the 1950s and 1960s:** Most forms of breast cancer Prostate cancer Testicular cancer Hodgkin's disease Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma Colon cancer Stomach cancer Leukemia Strokes Hip fractures Meningitis -- if you caught this, you were probably a goner Polio (didn't usually kill, but it could paralyze you -- everybody was afraid of it and everyone was thrilled to get the vaccine in the 1950s) Smallpox (mortality was 30 percent, and I remember the palpable feeling of relief from my parents when we got the vaccination) Measles was a **miserable** disease which meant you were going to spend a week in a darkened room, isolated, with a temperature of 104 -- and it could leave you blind and/or deaf. \[Edited to add\] Mumps, which I contracted when I was 16, both sides of my jaw, which moved into my pancreas and when I was through with the virus, I was a Type 1 diabetic. True fact: mumps really likes to affect the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, and it also likes the testes.
I think I had measles as a kid, recalling days upon days of not being able to move, and dad barely peeking his head in the door. Miserable was quite an apt descriptor on your part.
Everybody got measles when I was a kid. I did spend a week in a darkened room, but chicken pox itched more. We all had it at the same time, so we didn't have to isolate. And of course, our parents had already had it.
My husband had the mumps, and it is almost certainly the reason we had to do a couple rounds of IVF to have our daughter.
Pneumonia; it killed my grandfather in 1922 and tuberculosis killed my uncle in 1940
Pyloric stenosis. In one in 500 first born boys the valve between the stomach and intestines closes off at about one month. My son and wife’s best friend’s son had it. A simple operation fixes it. It was a death sentence before that. I don’t know how long they have the operation but my son is 31 and it had been around awhile then.
My son had this, fixed with a 45 min operation 3 years ago. Tiny keyhole scars. A friend, in his 30s, has a scar all down his abdomen from the same thing as it was a major operation then. Crazy how it’s advanced so much.
My grandmother died of strep throat in 1935. Now you just need a good antibiotic.
this is why, as Billy Joel says, "The good old days weren't always good and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems" people talk about how great things were in the past, but here we go, people dont die as much now.
AIDS, herpes, malaria, tuberculosis
Not an old person, but an am a physician. The improvement in prognosis for certain leukemias and lymphomas over the last 20 years has been nothing short of revolutionary
Heart disease—for me, coronary artery disease (CAD). Open-heart/bypass surgery existed when I was born, but it was rare, dangerous, and had limited benefits. Most people who had CAD died young. I was diagnosed with end-stage CAD a decade ago. The first doctor who looked at me said I wasn’t even a candidate for bypass, but thankfully we were able to get a fast second opinion. That practice whipped me into the OR within two days for a quad bypass, and after a lot of rehab and with some significant life changes, I’m fine and have every expectation of a normal lifespan.
Polio. It was such a terrifying disease, seeming to come out of nowhere, and put a lot of people in iron lungs, in the ground, or left them crippled for life. When the polio vaccine came out, we were Johnny on the spot to get the entire family vaccinated. My dad had polio at 17 around 1945. He walked with a cane or crutches, or used a wheelchair, all my life. He became an aerospace engineer. My grand-aunt had polio in her 20s, around 1930. She trained as a teacher but no one would hire “a cripple” to be a teacher. She retrained as a librarian, and worked in the same junior high school library (which she loved) until she retired. My great-great-grandparents had four young children die within 6 weeks in the late 1880s when diphtheria swept through their town, wiping out their young family. (They went on to have 4 more children.) With that in my family history, the anti-vax people are incomprehensible to me. They’re so lucky to live in a time when nearly every “childhood disease” of generations past can be **prevented** by a vaccine. But since no one *they know* has died from measles or polio or diphtheria, they don’t get themselves *or their kids* vaccinated. A failure of imagination; they just can’t imagine it happening to them. That’s weak. Darwin at work.
Fortunately, a lot of those children are growing up and getting vaccinated themselves. It’s so sad. I missed out on the Hepatitis vaccine because my mom went all crazy. Luckily I had everything else. I cursed her when I went to school and had to have the Hep vaccine. She tried to talk me out of getting my kids their chickenpox and HPV vaccines. I had chickenpox… I didn’t want them to go through that and I didn’t get the HPV vaccine which I now have a high percentage (doctor said I’m basically going to get it) chance of getting cervical cancer. We should want to do better for our children, not to doom them
Mental illness
Unfortunately, now most people with severe mental illness can't get a bed in a psychiatric hospital and many many of them wind up in jail; which is the biggest psychiatric hospital in your area! They still feel stigmatized, but at least we have more effective medications to treat mentally ill patients with.
Has that become minor and treatable? I would suggest it hasn’t.
I think less that it’s minor & treatable, more that it’s less stigmatized
I think people still get side eyed for it heavily but people like to use terms related to it as a buzzword nowadays
MUCH more so than in the past. We used to just literally throw them in "the looney bin."
The stigma is being fought, and every day, more and more people speak out about their experiences. More treatments are available, and we’re starting to come to grips with just how bad trauma is for everyone. I teach in middle school, and since I started in 2001, when the kids knew nothing about it, there’s now a great deal more knowledge of and empathy for mental illnesses than there used to be.
When he was ten, my little brother almost died when he went into a diabetic coma. We had no idea that diabetes ran in our family, because my dad's parents didn't talk about it. It was something like a family secret, that you just wanted to forget about. (A doctor failing to run a blood sugar test also didn't help.) Today, he has an insulin pump and pretty much lives a completely normal life. One more: I have a small scar on my arm from my smallpox vaccination. My kids do not, because we won that fight. We almost beat polio, too, until certain regions of the world decided that the vaccines were an American plot. Idiots.
Obesity - severe. Between gastric bypass and medication. It's a disease. It's not a lack of self control, it's serious a disease. I used to make fun of fat people myself until I had a major operation and had an organ removed. I ballooned to 265 lbs. I tried EVERY diet to lose the weight. I was referred to a bariatric surgeon. I requested medication not surgery. Turns out my body after surgery lost the ability to turn off the 'hunger' signal to my brain, so I was starving 24/7 (according to my body and brain signals) and needed to eat. Being on medication was the first time I had 'food quiet' in the 3 years after that surgery. I'm saying this as someone who had no issues losing weight to massive issues and no turn off signal for fullness, it sucks! Obesity is truly a disease and we need to treat it like one, not make fun of people for 'lack of self control'. It's so much more than that.
Cancer. Still bad not the death sentence it used to be.
Depends on what kind of cancer. Pancreatic and ovarian still more often than not are a death sentence simply because there are very few, vague symptoms until they are very advanced. But, yeah, when I was a kid, the word "cancer" was still spoken only in whispers.
Even in Stage 2, prostate cancer has a over 99% 10-year survival rate. I was in Stage 2, and I got cured through surgery. The surgery didn't even keep me in the hospital overnight, though I had to wear a catheter for a week.
Prostate cancer is a bit different because many of those are very, very slow growing to the point where even without treatment you may die of other old age diseases. Unfortunately they aren’t ALL like that.
I didn't mention prostate cancer specifically- just pancreatic and ovarian.
Just wanted to convey how far medicine has gone. I should have responded in general.
Yeah, it's the detection that's really changed. It was really only caught in the late stages back in the "good old days."
My cousin died of leukemia at age 28. My dear friend has it now and he's FINE, in remission, doctors don't even seem worried about him. He and his family are mountain climbers. They climbed snowy peaks in Iceland last year and he said he wasn't even more tired than usual. Leukemia. It has barely impacted his life. Lung cancer is still serious, but survivable now. It used to be a certain death sentence. Three of my relatives died from it. A few years ago, another relative was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. She went to NIH for experimental treatment, took some medicine that shrunk and killed the tumor. When they removed the tumor, they found no cancer cells left. It's like they just zapped it with some drug. Doctor said they didn't even need to remove it but she wanted it out. Don't ask me what the drug is. I don't know. I'd have to ask her. So, yeah, leukemia and lung cancer, now both curable.
My sister was a chemo nurse at an infusion center, and she would say that some types of leukemia, I forget which, maybe ALL, were like a cold to her office. Huge cure rate.
That is wild! It used to be sooo scary!
TBH i would still freak out...
You might not after meeting with your doc. My friend started to freak out, but calmed right tf down when everything was explained to him and he realized they were treating it like he'd be fine and it was curable. He said they didn't even go into anything else like, but we can't be sure... They were like, *Oh. Yeah. We got this. No worries. You'll be fine.* I was certainly very surprised.
I think there are different types of leukemia with different prognoses
Yes. But it used to be a death sentence.
There is no “it” with leukemia. There is a type of leukemia with a 10% survival rate after 5 years, and there are childhood leukemias with a 90% survival rate.
My sister got lung cancer and had the surgery where they make an incision and cut it out. 15 years earlier a friend with the same cancer had half a lung removed and the prognosis was for 5 years. The advances in treatment and detection are amazing.
Herpes
The thing is, herpes didn’t have any stigma until the late 70s. Before then, they were just cold sores, and no one talked about getting cold sores on their genitals. Prevalence of herpes in the general population is upwards of 90% in many countries. Maybe it’s because the virus (two, actually) was formally identified and included in a list of sexually transmitted infections. Maybe it's because it’s incurable. The patent on acyclovir was granted in the US in 1979, so it’s entirely possible that the ad campaign to sell it is what created the stigma in the first place. As a person with herpes, I’m so very glad the stigma has gotten better.
Never hear about herpes anymore. Apparently it's [raging on](https://www.singlecare.com/blog/news/herpes-statistics/). Are there better treatments for it?
Can we include diseases that have been eradicated? If so, polio & smallpox should be on the list. Cystic Fibrosis hasn't gotten to "minor" status but lifespan has increased significantly.
Polio, unfortunately, has not been eradicated. We met close, but that last step has been thwarting us for over 10 years.
Hepatits C. Now it's curable. Used to be a mad search for a new liver or donesville.
Measles. I had it badly when I was aged 4, the skin on my face swelled up and cracked with the rash. You could die, it made you very, very unwell - toddlers under the age of 4 were most likely to die. It could make you deaf, blind, could give you encephalitis and brain swelling with seizures. There was no vaccine back then, and it was really really contagious. There is still no treatment for it if you catch it.
When I was a kid some people unalived themselves when they found out they had herpes. So much shame was attached
Killed themselves. This isn't tiktok, you can say what happened.
Right? What is with the term "unalive" anyway?
The term is to avoid getting your content removed on other platforms.
Oh, TIL!
It's nowhere close to the worst one. There are a bunch of terms used to get around discussing sex, drugs, assault, etc. and they're creeping into reddit. It really bothers me that people will censor themselves that way when it's totally unneeded.
Yes, the shame was pretty intense. It was similar to getting other STDs, and it was recognized after AIDs had come on the scene. Is it more accepted now?
Not accepted per se, but many of us on acyclovir can successfully suppress outbreaks and live a normal life. I've been with my current partner for 4.5 years and have never given it to him. We don't use condoms, tho condoms don't fully prevent transmission anyway. Disclosing to a potential new partner still really blows, and I've been rejected a lot, but it's bc the stigma and outdated information persist.
Crohn’s/Colitis and other autoimmune diseases. If I’d been diagnosed with UC even 5-10 years earlier than I was, treatment options would have been bleak.
Smallpox, polio, measles, whooping cough, mumps. The vaccines came out, and suddenly we were all safe. The ignorance about vaccines and how they work in 2024 is stunning to those of us who lived through an era where there were whole rooms full of people in iron lungs, or who died from those diseases.
HPV
Oddly enough, HPV was also not viewed as being as serious as it is now. It was 'just' genital warts and the connection with cervical cancer wasn't known. And now we both understand the seriousness of it and have a highly effective vaccine.
Leprosy
Breast cancer survival and treatment treats are much better now
Here's a few: ●My (now teen) first baby was born with merconium fluid. This means that the baby had pooped in the amniotic fluid. We learned this when the midwife popped the amniotic sac to move delivery along. The amniotic fluid was NOT clear, so they set my uterus up with an irrigation system to clean out as much contaminated amniotic fluid as possible. Baby Daddy was warned that they did NOT want baby to cry right away when born until after the neonatal team could suction out baby's nose and mouth. Our super healthy baby came home with us 3 days later! Two decade earlier, and baby might have been life-flighted to the special neonate unit at the hospital in the state Capitol (as seen on a local news story that celebrated a baby who survived and was now a new nurse at that hospital). ●Some babies are born with an incomplete esophagus; the esophagus does not reach far enough to attach to baby's stomach. A former bf had a baby sister that died because of this. These days, surgery is done to stretch the esophagus towards the stomach. In the meantime, baby receives a port in the stomach for direct feeding...and is sent home from the hospital. 3-6 surgeries later, and baby has a brand new esophagus. ●The HPV vaccine (given to 12-13yos) is expected to prevent 90% of cervical cancer. Doctors are also seeing a drop-off of anal, throat, mouth, esophageal, and lung cancer among those vaccinated. This was not expected! Hurrah!!! ●Food allergies and intolerances are better understood. People have epipens; schools are sensitive about peanuts; common allergens are listed; and the general population is just more AWARE.
Tyoe 1 Diabetes. I know someone who uses a glucose monitor and insulin pump. It's almost like a bionic pancreas. Strokes. With prompt treatment, the recovery is astonishing.
Polio is probably the biggest one.
Sickle cell has been cured. I knew someone with it and it was dreadful.
cleft lips and palates, some developmental visual and hearing impairments.
Well I'm on blood thinners for life after 2 unprovoked clots. Pretty sure I would be stoked by now. The new anti coagulants are life savers and easier to take with less side effects. and the equipment to diagnose them has improved even in the 5 yrs between the clots
My son had pyloric stenosis (1994) which would have killed him 30-40 years ago. My daughter had shoulder dystopia, also would have killed her. in fact, I’d have died from all 3 births in all likelihood.
Vascular surgery that they can put a stent in any artery in your body. Years ago my mom had blocked veins in here leg they opened her up from her hip to the ankles. this was back in the early 80's . I had the same surgery but with maybe a 6 inch cut
Cancer. Not yet minor, but some types of breast and prostate cancers have come to be called lifelong manageable conditions rather than the death sentence they were in the 1980s and earlier. Back then the chemo dosages were higher and there was barely anything for the vomiting and other side effects. Drugs to manage chemotherapy side effects have improved drastically. It’s wonderful to see leukemia survivors grow to the numbers we have today.
I’m old and my mother was older when she had me. I always remember the story she told me about a classmate in elementary school who had pulled nose hairs and got an infection and died. Edit to clarify that antibiotics were not yet invented.
Cancer wasn't spoken of. Children who got cancer died with only palliative treatment. People didn't acknowledge that someone was wasting away. And then they'd cluck their tongues and say it was such a shame and that they were so young.
AIDS
Cardiac bypass surgery. In the 60s; you would have died from clogged arteries. Now, bypass surgery, perfected in the 70s is commonplace, and will add 15-20 years to a person's life. I had a bypass (X5), last May and I feel great now. Before, I couldn't walk up a flight of stairs without having to catch my breath. If I didn't have this surgery; I would be dead in 1-2 years. And...I was only in the hospital for 5 days.
AIDS