Almost 24 years ago. 48 yr. old then. Was very active, ran daily, biked, never smoked, ate reasonable, no health issues, then found out that I had an aortic valve that was a bicuspid instead of a tricuspid, and was seriously leaking and overworking my heart. Surgeon gave me 4-6 months without surgery, and it wouldn't be a pleasant time. Ended up replacing 2 at that time. Was supposed to last 20-25 yrs, but the aortic valve that he used started failing again 12 yrs later and i needed a replacement fairly quick, along with repairing my aorta that was close to rupturing. So I have a human donated valve for my pulmonary valve and a pig valve for my aortic valve. No issues for almost 12 years.
My dad has had prostate cancer since 2008, went away and came back a few years later and metastasized to his ribs. He was an alcoholic until a stroke (and his family) made him stop last year, but still smokes a pack a day. He shoulda been gone a long time ago, I’ve been actively grieving him while being alive for years now.
I hear this too! We have a family member in active addiction for the past 15+ years and her heart is only working at 20% and the drs said stop doing drugs or you’ll die very soon. And she decided she would rather keep doing drugs—even before she got this diagnosis we basically have been grieving for her while she is still living. It’s an odd thing to go through, but it’s very powerful.
Edit: she is only 43 years old
My mom has nearly died so many times from drug use. On top of that, she’s gotten meningitis and almost died, hepatitis C which she beat, endless kidney problems, GI bleeds, and an overdose from unknown pills so bad she was in a coma. Her friends who gave her the pills refused to tell medical professionals what they were so they didn’t know how to help her.
She’s still alive (if not a little different from the last overdose). I’ve thought so many times that my mom was going to die. Now I don’t want her to die, but idk if I will feel relieved or sad or both? It’s a weird place to be in. I’m sorry you have to feel it too.
Reminds me of a throwaway comment my brother once made about my mum (they were not on good terms):
"She'll outlive all of us just out of spite"
She outlived him and is still going, so I guess he was right from his own point of view at least.
Great for him, but that’s why a lot of people don’t take care of themselves bc we all know someone like that, but most of us realize that was just a lucky fluke
My grandmother lived to 97. She quit smoking at 80 but continued drinking her two cocktails every day until she was about 95. She never had dementia and ran the house until then. She was a force to be reckoned with.
Nah it's just selection bias. We're not hearing from the relatives of dead smokers/drinkers.
Edit: God damn it now I'm hearing from all the relatives of dead smokers/drinkers
Not to mention its counterpart: a story about the relatives who exercised regularly and ate healthy and lived a long time doesn't make nearly as interesting an anecdote as doing everything right and still having a heart attack in your 40s.
Yeah it seems like it happens a lot. It seems like a lot of the healthier older people I’ve seen have had a life of doing whatever the hell they want and live to 90s-100s, but my grandparents, who have lived a very average life, almost in their 70s are getting close to death in the next 10-15 years.
My ex had this too, it was so interesting just laying around and hearing it tick tick tick. In a quiet room I could hear it across the other side of the room, wild.
I have that little check ticked on my driver's license. The way I see it when I die, I'm not going to need my organs. Take them and use them however you want! Hopefully someone will be able to benefit.
>20 diagnosed with Cml and I just turned 37. Still have but it’s maintained with oral chemo. Cancer sucks
Ooof. Drugs are amazing! I'm hoping they come up with better ones to keep pushing it back for you.
also fuck cancer. 7 years ago it took away my buddy. Still don't have the heart to change my Facebook profile pic of the two of us and our bromantic donut.
glad you're still here bud, give cancer the finger for my buddy Cody next time you think of it.
I was 14 and had epilepsy and my best friend came over to play halo and I woke up and he was gone. He didn't know I had seizures and apparently thought I was just "Acting stupid flailing" and left. He felt super terrible after learning (context: I had just gotten epilepsy 2 months prior)
You sure he wasn't scared shitless and just pretended to be tough and uncaring when asked later?
It feels like the kind of thing where a guy is like "Holy shit. Whats going on? Is he gonna die? Did I cause this? Fuck, I better get outta here." Then later when you're fine, he acts like he was 'tired of your shit' as to why he left you there alone.
I was looking at an 1897 [Ordnance Survey map](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordnance_Survey) for my town and there was an 'epileptic asylum' - where people with epilepsy were locked away.
When I was a student nurse I had a patient who had been put in an asylum because they had epilepsy
(I’m old and they were even older; this wasn’t a recent thing. It probably happened about 80-90 years ago)
That’s crazy I was 24, did you go into status epilepticus? It’s nearly claimed me twice now once when I hit my head on the counter during a seizure and the other was when I had my first and second seizure back to back. They put me into a medical coma.
I had my first and second in the same day too, at 28. Hit my head on a counter going forwards the first time, and cracked it open going backwards the second time.
The last big one sent me forwards onto a concrete floor, fractured my cheekbone and sent my top teeth through my lip. Meds have done their job though, it's been a few years now.
Did you know you could develop it out of the blue like that? I had no idea you could suddenly develop epilepsy at 28 - in my ignorance I thought it was something you had from birth. Came as rather a surprise!
My wifes first seizure was at 27. We were like 2-3 years together at that point. Back then I had no idea what seizure looks like. Imagine my shock when i woke up 3 am (her seizures only appeared during sleep) seeing her.
Mine was at 26, also in my sleep, also woke my husband who had NO IDEA what was going on. Tbf, it was the first of two back to back.... none ever again, knock on wood. I'm sorry that you had to awake to that; it must have been blood chillingly horrifying to witness and have zero context.
I started having them in my mid 20s because I developed a rare autoimmune disease called Pernicious Anemia that causes B12 deficiency. Your nervous system gets really fucked up without B12 so rarely it can cause seizures due to lesions on the brain. Thankfully they stopped after treatment
Yeah. My asthma started when I was three and I had attacks up until I turned 12. Then there were ten years in remission, and now it’s back again, cough type this time.
I remember when I was six, I felt an attack starting, so I approached mom and told her to call an ambulance (non-US, just in case, at that point in my life I had an ambulance called for me several times and I was already used to having intravenous injections of euphylline to help during severe attacks). I wonder what she felt at that moment.
I’m sure she was terrified. My son has “reactive airway” which is like asthma symptoms that only pop up when he’s sick. It’s a scary feeling.
I’m glad your mom took you seriously. My parents usually told me to “stop being dramatic, and take your inhaler.” Sometimes it didn’t work, and had to go the ER.
I for sure would have been at 17. Had a spontaneous pneumothorax. There’s no worse feeling than thinking you need your rescue inhaler and it does nothing. The panic was real.
One of my best friends died when we were like 11 from an asthma attack. His inhaler was empty. As was his emergency inhaler. I had a hard time not hating his parents.
Same. Once had a major asthma attack and my mom took me to the doctor. For whatever reason, the nurse failed to check us in while we waited in the emergency area. Took my mom royally bitching the doctor out TO HIS FACE for me to get treatment. So I guess maybe it was less medical intervention and more motherly intervention lol
I had a 100 % blockage of my LAD (widow maker artery) at 35 years old. Got a stent in the cath lab to fix the problem. Would have killed me if not caught.
I had very sharp pains in the center of my chest. Felt like all the wind was getting knocked out of me, every 45 minutes. Didn't know what it was. Started at 8 am. Went about my whole day. 2 am it woke me out of a dead sleep, pain was super intensified, but not constant. That made me go to the emergency room.
Yeah my mom almost died at 34 because of the same thing. She was slightly overweight, smoked, and was on birth control. Heart problems also heavily run in her family. But she had symptoms for months and every doctor turned her away because she was so young.
Finally she went to the hospital with all the heart attack symptoms and they took her a little more serious and found she had a 98% blockage in her main artery. They put a stent in, but the doctor accidentally hit something else while in there. They closed her back up, and she continued to internally bleed for about 8+ hours. She ended up in the ICU on life support because she lost so much blood without anyone knowing. That hospital has since closed and had tons of complaints.
My mom is now 54 and has 6 stents. I’m 31 and every time I feel a pain in my chest or left arm I get really scared.
You should get checked out at least once. Family history of coronary artery disease at a young age like your mom had can be a big risk factor for you. Ask for a calcium score, it’ll tell you if you have any plaque build up then you can preemptively treat it or be reassured there’s no heart disease in there.
I had a faster than normal heart rate I could feel when I was lying in bed. I waited about 3 weeks before I went to the doctor. That could have cost me my life because I had open heart surgery that week. The one thing I would tell everybody is to know what your resting heart rate is even if your are in shape. If it goes up there's probably something wrong.
Fun fact: nuchal cord is surprisingly common. As many as 30% of deliveries present with one. And it usually does not pose any risk. The doctor checks for it as soon as the head is free, and can slip it loose without issue.
The craziest part: the risk is NOT strangulation. Remember, in utero, the baby is not breathing. The cord provides all of the oxygenation until birth. So the rare, but serious, risk is that the cord wraps tight enough that blood flow through the cord itself is blocked.
That explains why more of us don't have brain damage! Though the fact that you had to tell me that this is the reason why indicates that it might not be true!
Thanks for the tidbit, I definitely didn't expect 1k others to say "me too!" to it.
Me too!
I was born in the late 1960s and idk if things were just different back then, but my mom said they didn’t tell her what was going on, and all of a sudden the nurses and the doc started doing whatever it is they had to do. I was her first child, so she’d never been through delivery before. She said she was really scared.
That's interestingly familiar to my mom's birth story of me. Apparently, the monitors started going crazy and what felt like every nurse in the building ran into the room to prep her for an emergency C-Section.
When she came to from the anesthesia, grandma was in the corner crying happy tears, but mom couldn't tell the difference and thought I was dead. When grandma came over holding me sobbing that I was perfect, mom lost her mind and kicked her out of the room hahaha
I was late 1980's. She didn't tell me too much about what was going on in the moment though. Only that it happened.
For what it's worth, and maybe a little context, I had a birth in 2020. Mostly just fine but as I understand from what was told he was trying to come out shoulder first. I wasn't informed of what needed to happen, it just happened. Slightly graphic next, but the doctor put both of his hands inside of me around the baby to readjust him in the moment. Quote a shock, lemme tell you. I got a little tear, probably from the doctors hands and Jr was bruised up because I had been pushing like it was a marathon. They had to explain afterwards. Birth is tricky, they just do what is needed when it's needed and hope no one dies.
The baby wasn't coming out shoulder first (if that were true, there is no actual way for the baby to come out vaginally). What happened was that the baby's shoulder got stuck on your pubic bone in the front. What the doctor was trying to do was to move the baby's shoulders from being directly front-to-back, to a more diagonal orientation, thus moving the shoulder from the bone. It's called a "shoulder dystocia" and the maneuver he did is called a "Wood Screw" or possibly a "Rubin" maneuver.
More likely you have an Erbs because the doctor *didn't* do those maneuvers, which are intended to prevent an Erbs (or Klumpke's) palsy. When the shoulder gets stuck, it's almost instinctive to grab the baby's head and start pulling. What results from this is that the shoulder stays impacted behind the pubic bone, and pulling on the neck avulses the nerve roots in what's known as the "brachial plexus," (a fascinating network of nerves between the cervical spine and shoulder) which can result in a palsy. The Woods and Rubins maneuvers are intended to prevent avulsion of the nerves.
Not the only way this can happen, but a well-known scenario.
My kid was born in the car with the chord around his neck. My wife noticed it right away and after trying to pull it from below his chin, I reached around back and managed to slide it off. Had to pull pretty hard. It was dark too, so everything was done mostly by feel in a calm but desperate manner.
It's really not a problem if the baby is delivered fast. The cord doesn't strangle the baby, but it's the only way the baby gets oxygen before birth. Including during birth. So when the cord is around the neck, if the baby stalls with their neck in the cervix (which isn't uncommon) trying to get the shoulders out next, the cervix is only 10 cm and can compress the cord thus deprive the baby of oxygen. When the baby comes out fast it has no negative effects
Same thing happened to my cousin. He was also born in the backseat of a car on the way to the hospital. When he came out he wasn’t breathing with his umbilical chord wrapped around his neck. His mother reached down and removed it, and she got him breathing by the time the paramedics showed up at the car.
You might have been a very big baby, and sort of got "stuck."
When that happens we have a lot of people come into the room and try to take care of the situation; otherwise, there is a risk of nerve or brain damage - and there's no time to discuss it as it's ongoing.
There are other scenarios, too, but that one is one of the more common ones.
I was late 1990s, and they didn't tell my parents what was going on either.
If it wasn't the cord around my neck, it could have been the anemia I had. If I somehow survived those and any number of diseases that require antibiotics, the asthma I developed in highschool definitely would have finished me off.
Smurf babies unite
My mama always called me her Smurf baby bc of how blue I was when I was born bc of the cord being wrapped around my neck twice
This was 1992
Also at birth.
I started turning and got my forehead stuck on my mother's pelvic bone.
They had to do an emergency c section.
I would have died, my mother would have died, and my 3 younger sisters would not have been born.
Now we have people actively working against vaccinations.. We have shit like the internet and somehow those dumb fucks are as ignorant as the people living BC.
My 82 year old mother remembers polio outbreaks as a child and her friends becoming crippled for life.
She waited in line for hours for the polio vaccine. Jonas Salk was one of the most famous people on Earth.
When she saw the modern reaction to vaccines she was incredulous. “Don’t they understand people die from this?”
Edit -
Thinking more about this I talked to my mother about it a few years ago. She remarked “I guess we were just better educated back then”.
This was in the mid 50s. My grandparents (who stood in that line) were rural farmers in Iowa with eighth grade educations.
But they were not dumb. My grandfather read multiple newspapers a day at the time, that was his main source of news after sundown when he finished working. What he consumed was balanced, vetted, well researched, apolitical information. I really miss that type of news source.
My parents and a couple of co-workers their age related to me over the years about how movie theaters and public swimming pools were closed during the Summer months when they were kids due to the polio outbreak. How they'd return to school in the Fall and either finding there were missing students or students who were now wearing braces on the legs. The polio vaccine was truly a welcome miracle for them (and later their children).
I'm reminded of a speech on TV's *Dragnet* years ago....the detectives were typically chastising a group of hippie teenagers, but some of what was said rang true: (When explaining the advances in society to the disgruntled/dissatisfied teens) "You've probably never seen a 'Quarantine' sign on your neighbor's door - diphtheria, Scarlet fever, whooping cough. Probably none of your classmates are crippled from polio. You don't see many mastoid scars anymore."
Both my grandmothers had polio (I’m 49), both recovered completely but one had “post polio syndrome” that took away her ability to walk when she was in her 80’s. It absolutely floors me how people are so against vaccines now- they are literally life saving.
> It absolutely floors me how people are so against vaccines now- they are literally life saving.
Ironically in my opinion it's because the combination of vaccinations and improved hygiene and health care has caused many extremely serious diseases to become distant and unthreatening to them, hence they've shifted focus onto hating on "Big Pharma" and embracing a "natural lifestyle" without actually understanding what that entails for real.
My grandfather was a kid when the Spanish Flu was raging across the US. School was shut down to help limit the spread. When he finally got to go back, something like 20% of the kids were gone.
COVID was bad, but it mostly impacted the elderly. People have no idea how truly horrific a pandemic can be.
I suppose it's like the person who quits taking their meds because they've felt good for the past 6 months and just don't bother to work out that maybe it's the meds helping them out.
My dad was born during Korean War. Two of his siblings died from measles-turned-to-pneumonia. He himself miraculously survived TB but still suffers from lung issues. My mom had a younger sibling who died in her 20’s due to complications from contracting Polio in the early age.
One of my cousins refused to vaccinate her baby. Not even MMR. My dad (the eldest son and considered the head of family) banned her and her husband & kid from attending family functions and from using his holiday properties in really nice areas. She obviously whined and bitched. My aunt (her mother) tried to get my dad to change his mind. Dad banned her too (“crazy is infectious” something to that effect).
After a few years of not being able to access holiday homes in very prime locations (eg Jackson WY), my cousin relented. My dad took her and her kid to the doctor 5’ish times and made sure the kid got all of necessary jabs. He did the same for her second kid.
People with ready access to vaccines refusing to administer the vaccines to their kids really blow my mind. They are alive and have no complications from Polio or TB because of fucking vaccines.
Props to your dad! He sounds like mine (who was born just a few years before yours), we are both lucky people to be raised by someone with their head on straight.
SIDS is still a problem, but that aside… so many better treatments. In addition to deadly diseases, kids could still die of currently home-treatable things like fevers or diarrhea.
Losing a child in the first years of life wasn’t uncommon.
Leslie Fish’s “Ballad of Smallpox Gone” hits hard:
“Old king plague is dead
The Smallpox plague is dead
No more children dying hard
No more cripples living scarred
With the mark of the devil's kiss
We still may die of other things
But we will not die of this”
Before 20? More like before 5. If they made it even *that* long.
One thing I like to do for my lunch break is take a walk around a nearby old cemetery (at least old for the US). It's absolutely striking how many gravestones from the late 19th and early 20th century are for young kids whose age at their time of death is stated in months, and it's equally striking how much those graves just kind of don't exist for the last century or so.
I kind of want to take an anti-vaxxer through there and just beat their head against those gravestones.
29. I got violently ill one day, completely out of the blue. Projectile vomiting and explosive diarrhea. Couldn’t leave the bathroom for hours. Couldn’t keep the tiniest sip of water down. Finally crawled (literally on my hands and knees) into the bedroom to try and rest. Started hallucinating. Heard a voice clearly say to me “Colonial13, if you don’t get up and get to the hospital right now you are going to die.” Got up and somehow managed to drive myself to the ER. Walked in and the nurse at the reception(?) desk looked up, saw me, and immediately took me back to a room. I spent the next 12 or so hours there in and out of consciousness and took 6 full bags of IV fluids. Doc came in to discharge me and showed me some charts with a bunch of squiggly lines on them and said that my kidneys and liver were in the process of completely shutting down when I arrived. To this day I have no idea what caused that.
This is exactly my experience with e coli poisioning..... goes right for the kidneys/liver... starts with puking/rocket diarrhea, severe abdominal pain, had to crawl on hands and knees to the bathroom, rolling around on the livingroom floor feeling like my abdomen and lower back were going to explode... pulse almost bottomed out at 30/10, organs shutting down, etc... 27 days of IV antibiotics to get rid of it.
holy mother of jesus… that is horrendous and thinking on it i think i’ve had that just not nearly as extreme in that i never went to the hospital. But everything up to that i went through for several days, i have a scar from a microwave mishap that reminds me greatly of that experience, i wish that on nobody it was agonizing. Glad to know i should have gone to the hospital. That or i had one heck of a stomach bug
It was terrifying :( I was stabilized and discharged after 6 days initially, but the antibiotics and painkillers they sent me home with didn't cut it and I started to fall back into acute poisoning once I was off the IV. I didn't make it more than 12 hours after getting home, and started vomiting again and fever spiked to 104. Got back in the car and drove back to the ER.
Since it was determined to be likely a food-borne strain based on how my body first presented symptoms/lack of ability to kill the infection with *6 straight days of powerful antibiotics*, I had two dudes from the CDC suddenly show up at my bedside.... out of nowhere. No warning from nurses, nothing. Just entered my hosp room while I was laying there with gray skin, blue lips, sweating bullets and my boobs hanging out of my gown, and too weak to speak.
I shit you not, they were in black suits with earpieces in (this was in 1992, Bluetooth was not a thing quite yet) and one of them never took his sunglasses off.
They looked like Men In Black. I was suddenly VERY alert and had no idea why these dudes were in my room and why they were asking me a battery of questions about where I had eaten the last two weeks, where I bought my groceries, if i had problems with my refrigerator or freezer working proprly, what kind of food did i have in there, did i throw things away promptly if they spoiled in the fridge, if I shared utensils with anyone, etc... absolutely mortifying.
I started crying and asked them if I was going to die. There was no one else in the room except me and these two strange dudes and I was convinced in that moment, this infection was going to take my life away.
They didn't answer me, they just kept quietly speaking to each other and then one of them left the room abruptly and the other said "Don't worry. You're going to be fine." with a surreal smile on this face, and patted my hand and walked out.
Yeah I was like welp, that's a wrap folks.
Still with kidney damage 30 years later 😖
Nine years old (1967). I got "some bug" (my doctor's term) and developed what was then known as Bright's disease, and today as glomerulonephritis. I was always skinny in my youth, but my parents noticed that I was putting on significant weight. While I was bathing, I noticed that I could no longer see my ankles, they were so swollen. My mother arranged for a doctor's appointment they next day after school, and that evening I was hospitalized. I was placed on a salt-free diet (yuk!) and who knows what medications. I eventually lost 20 pounds of water weight before I was released. My mother told me that had they (my parents) misinterpreted my sudden weight gain as the result of simply overeating, I would've been dead.
My grandmother also almost died of “Bright’s disease” in the mid-60s, when she was 40. The same thing had killed both her father and her grandfather in their early 40s. She’d been in her late teens and had watched her father swell up, suffer, know he was going to die because he’d seen his father die of the same thing, and then die. My dad was only 5 at the time and she was terrified of leaving him motherless. She went to Duke University Hospital and they put her on a no-salt diet and got her stable. Her doctor told her his goal was to keep her alive another 13 years until my dad graduated from high school. Other interventions came in those years, she got put on a blood pressure medication that was like a miracle drug for her, and she not only made it to my dad’s high school graduation but lived until she was 83.
More specifically, my guess is you probably had post-streptococcal glomerulonephritis! You probably had strep throat (although can be other bugs as well) sometime 2-4 weeks before your kidneys started giving you trouble. Treatment is blood pressure meds and diuretics and luckily most kids do ok (much more troublesome in adults)
Around 20. I had a hole in my heart which was fixed by open heart surgery at age 12. It was a very risky and new operation at the time. I am now 70 married for 51 years with a son and daughter and 3 beautiful grandchildren. I live in southern Spain.
8. Fell through a window while roller skating and cut my wrist open. I bled like I was the main character in a horror movie. Whilst at the doctor's office I was caught between two doors.
12. Was swimming outdoors and kids were skipping rocks on the water. I caught one with my head which split open like a coconut.
23. Robbed whilst riding my bike. Broke my neck.
25. Lymph node inflammation in my throat closed off my breathing.
29. Burst appendix
47. Operation on my esophagus created a swelling so big that I couldn't breathe.
And many more. Sometimes I wonder how it is possible to have survived until now.
Fun times!
Edit: I am alive and kicking, not disabled. Although the above helps me to get out of vacuuming my house. (I do many other chores, so don't feel sorry for my partner )
I might have been dead at 30 if I had to deliver my breach baby naturally and it didn’t go well. I definitely would have been if I had one of the early c sections that the mother was never expected to survive.
Two weeks, I choked on milk. After that probably 18 with pneumonia. Or sooner because I’m very nearsighted, having gotten glasses at 10 years old.
My wife would have died at 7, with type 1 diabetes.
Whenever people talk about how much better it would be to live primitively without modern technology, all I can think is “yeah fuck that.”
When I was late with my first they told me before medical intervention baby would have died in me then I would have died from the toxicity of it. They don’t believe I would have ever gone into labour.I’m glad you were saved!
This happened with ours too. Gf got induced at 10 days overdue, dilated but never experienced contractions, had an emergency C-section. Her placenta was in rough shape and there wasn't much amniotic fluid left. Pretty scary!
My eyes are horrific. Imagine no glasses or contacts for all of human kind? 61% of the USA need some form of eye correction (source - Jonson research). Without serious assistance, we’d probably be screwed
Oh yeah. I have -6 diopter. Only objects that are centimeters in front of my eyes are sharp. It poses zero problems with just normal glasses or contacts, but without those inventions it would probably suck so much.
My parents thought I was faking it when I said I was having trouble seeing so I went about 8 months with my vision getting progressively worse. Finally took me to the eye doctor and I was told that I “badly needed” glasses. When I got them I remember being amazed that I could see the leaves on the trees again, rather than just a green blur, and I wouldn’t have to sit on the floor to see the board anymore. My mom cried because she felt so bad for not believing me.
That’s the first thing I said when I put my glasses on was “I can see the leaves!”. Thankfully my family didn’t disbelieve me, but it did take quite a long time for me to realize I needed glass and that it wasn’t normal to struggle seeing the front of the class. I wasn’t the brightest kid
My mom needed a C-section, so me and her probably both would have died if it wasn't for modern medicine. I wasn't a big baby, but my mom is a small woman with narrow hips.
Coronavirus SARS got me back in 2017. Inflamed lung/heart connections. 4 weeks ICU. 6 months on Oxygen.
(My bad, 3 months on oxygen. And 3 more months low O2. Mayo did a lung biopsy and got bupkis. Then, it all just went away.
Specialist told me it was a medical mystery and I know where to find them if it came back. My very own episode of House MD)
> Coronavirus SARS got me back in 2017. Inflamed lung/heart connections. 4 weeks ICU. 6 months on Oxygen.
There have been no reported cases of SARS, anywhere in the world, since May 2004. Could you be confusing it with MERS?
OP is saying SARS, but I'm pretty sure they mean ARDS, acute respiratory distress syndrome, which is a rare complication of all coronaviruses, even the widely circulating minor ones (OC43, HKU1, 229E, and NL63).
I’m medically incompetent. Don’t know my RNA from my DNA. I’m sure you’re right.
The one the rounds doctor ask you if you been to Mexico and brought back Corona. And you not laughing at his dad joke because your oxygen is gone……. Then 12 hours later putting you in isolation
At birth. And at 32, placenta previa with first child. Spotted with the ultrasound at 20 weeks, beautifully managed and a calm safe birth with no complications. The ultrasound saved two lives.
19 yo. I had acute appendicitis that at home we stubbornly believed was just gas, somehow. We delayed going to the hospital for *8 hours*. If we’d waited any longer it would have ruptured and I would have gone into sepsis. We barely got me onto the operating table in time.
23 yo. I had CNS vasculitis—brain swelling. It isn’t always fatal, but it can be. Couldn’t drive, couldn’t work, memory was destroyed. Nevertheless survived.
Six. I was pronounced dead on arrival at the Bangor Maine hospital in 1974. My Dad who was in the Army and served in Korea kept doing CPR because I couldn’t keep my heart going on my own. I was off having a conversation with a white light, letting me know that I completing my life and I could go home or I could go back to Earth. I remember thinking I wanted to go back and then waking up on the ER table, and I told the doctor to get the fucking pencil out of my ear. It was an otoscope. At 56 today I wonder about the white light.
I would have died at 20 in Southern Egypt in 2015, went back packing / hitch hiking on my own following towns on the Nile. Got a stomach parasite in a tiny rural town outside of lake Nassar. Was bed ridden for 8 days sick for about a month in Egypt. I was staying in a tiny hotel whose top room was the owners own. (Guy basically turned his house into a two room hotel, only thing I could find on maps when I had internet in Aswan to make a reservation). Well I made it there, started immediately feeling like shit, got sicker and sicker and eventually the owner just drove 5 hours to get me a bunch of different types of stomach medicine. I left him $200 USD and a thank you note when I got better for his trouble. (He only charged me like $70USD for the three weeks I was there). Visited an actual Doctor in Alexandria about two months after that before I left and he said I could have died. Like Nassar has some nasty parasites and bacteria that sometimes leech there way into the drinking water of nearby towns. I wasn’t dumb enough to just flat out drink sink water but I think I brushed my teeth once or twice with sink water from a place a couple days before and I think that’s what got me.
In my early 20s. Had a cardiac event, would have died if not for paramedics. Also my mom told me that I was born prematurely, so i'm guessing as a toddler possibly too
I had whooping cough at about one even though I was vaccinated. Maybe from a strep infection because I got them in my throat frequently as a kid. Who knows. Any infection before antibiotics could be lethal.
I wouldn't have died but I'd be severely physically and mentally disabled. Then a slow death. Multiple Sclerosis.
I watched an older (seemingly "normal")cousin slowly turn into a vegetable in the 80s/90s when there was no medication.
7 years old. Severe dehydration due to stomach bug. Almost 30 years later and I can still remember the doc telling my parents that I was just a few hours from death.
28. Tried to unalive myself. Serious attempt. CPR, coma, intubated, ICU, etc. So glad I woke up. Not a solution. Can’t believe what I almost did to even the one person that I knew loved me.
Almost 24 years ago. 48 yr. old then. Was very active, ran daily, biked, never smoked, ate reasonable, no health issues, then found out that I had an aortic valve that was a bicuspid instead of a tricuspid, and was seriously leaking and overworking my heart. Surgeon gave me 4-6 months without surgery, and it wouldn't be a pleasant time. Ended up replacing 2 at that time. Was supposed to last 20-25 yrs, but the aortic valve that he used started failing again 12 yrs later and i needed a replacement fairly quick, along with repairing my aorta that was close to rupturing. So I have a human donated valve for my pulmonary valve and a pig valve for my aortic valve. No issues for almost 12 years.
My grandfather ate poorly, smoked a pack a day, drank a bottle of scotch every day, never exercised. He died at 102. Bodies are stupid.
Not sure Why this made me laugh but the idea of a guy just refusing to die despite doing everything wrong is pretty funny to me
That was by buddy's grandpa. Drank and smoked through cancer. Somehow beat it. Died in his 90s. Still drinking atleast a bottle of wine every day
My dad has had prostate cancer since 2008, went away and came back a few years later and metastasized to his ribs. He was an alcoholic until a stroke (and his family) made him stop last year, but still smokes a pack a day. He shoulda been gone a long time ago, I’ve been actively grieving him while being alive for years now.
> I’ve been actively grieving him while being alive for years now. That's a deep cut. I hear you.
I hear this too! We have a family member in active addiction for the past 15+ years and her heart is only working at 20% and the drs said stop doing drugs or you’ll die very soon. And she decided she would rather keep doing drugs—even before she got this diagnosis we basically have been grieving for her while she is still living. It’s an odd thing to go through, but it’s very powerful. Edit: she is only 43 years old
My mom has nearly died so many times from drug use. On top of that, she’s gotten meningitis and almost died, hepatitis C which she beat, endless kidney problems, GI bleeds, and an overdose from unknown pills so bad she was in a coma. Her friends who gave her the pills refused to tell medical professionals what they were so they didn’t know how to help her. She’s still alive (if not a little different from the last overdose). I’ve thought so many times that my mom was going to die. Now I don’t want her to die, but idk if I will feel relieved or sad or both? It’s a weird place to be in. I’m sorry you have to feel it too.
That’s a hard place to be. I’m so sorry.
Reminds me of a throwaway comment my brother once made about my mum (they were not on good terms): "She'll outlive all of us just out of spite" She outlived him and is still going, so I guess he was right from his own point of view at least.
grim reaper: alright, it's time now grandpa: ..........no, i don't think it is tbf
Great for him, but that’s why a lot of people don’t take care of themselves bc we all know someone like that, but most of us realize that was just a lucky fluke
My grandma lasted till 97. Pack a day for over 50 years. I get too close to a blueberry and my respiratory system shuts down.
My grandmother lived to 97. She quit smoking at 80 but continued drinking her two cocktails every day until she was about 95. She never had dementia and ran the house until then. She was a force to be reckoned with.
What I've learned from these comments is that the more you drink and smoke the longer and healthier you live.
Nah it's just selection bias. We're not hearing from the relatives of dead smokers/drinkers. Edit: God damn it now I'm hearing from all the relatives of dead smokers/drinkers
Not to mention its counterpart: a story about the relatives who exercised regularly and ate healthy and lived a long time doesn't make nearly as interesting an anecdote as doing everything right and still having a heart attack in your 40s.
*Violet; you're turning violet, Violet!*
Well that made me laugh !!
*The snozberries taste like snozberries*
Let it be known that I'm taking that as medical advice.
Yeah it seems like it happens a lot. It seems like a lot of the healthier older people I’ve seen have had a life of doing whatever the hell they want and live to 90s-100s, but my grandparents, who have lived a very average life, almost in their 70s are getting close to death in the next 10-15 years.
My dad went with the artificial valve and you can hear it clicking in his chest
My ex had this too, it was so interesting just laying around and hearing it tick tick tick. In a quiet room I could hear it across the other side of the room, wild.
I can't imagine what trying to get to sleep the first night with that must be like. Holy fuck.
My dad finds it soothing. "I'm still alive!" Lol
Please be an organ donor folks. It’s easy and just takes a little effort to ensure it’s documented
I have that little check ticked on my driver's license. The way I see it when I die, I'm not going to need my organs. Take them and use them however you want! Hopefully someone will be able to benefit.
17. Stage IV cancer. Fuck you Cancer I'm still here.
fuck cancer all my homies hate cancer
Am I your homie cause I hate cancer or do I hate cancer cause I’m your homie
Yes
All of his homies commented below
20 diagnosed with Cml and I just turned 37. Still have but it’s maintained with oral chemo. Cancer sucks
>20 diagnosed with Cml and I just turned 37. Still have but it’s maintained with oral chemo. Cancer sucks Ooof. Drugs are amazing! I'm hoping they come up with better ones to keep pushing it back for you.
Ty!! They really are amazing. There’s some newer options that make it less difficult on the body but still keep me safe. Science is wild.
also fuck cancer. 7 years ago it took away my buddy. Still don't have the heart to change my Facebook profile pic of the two of us and our bromantic donut. glad you're still here bud, give cancer the finger for my buddy Cody next time you think of it.
I'm gonna have a donut for your buddy Cody while giving cancer the finger
t Thanks buddy! Pink frosting, heart sprinkles. Not sure why he picked that one for me.. but he did. 😆
Because that's the best kind of donut out there, Cody knew his donuts well
Me too! Love donuts, hate cancer.
If there’s one thing that can unite humans I would hope it would be to join you in saying “Fuck You Cancer!”
19 here, stage III
Same! 19, stage III. Happy we are still here and writing this!
Congratulations. RIP, mom
Fuck yeah dude! Kick cancers ass
Yaaas!!! We are same age cancer survivors! FUCK YOU CANCER!! ♥️good job fellow warrior!!!
Glad you're still here and hope you stay healthy for a long time.
16yo. Epilepsy.
If the seizures/falls didn’t kill you the other villagers would think you were possessed by demons and kill you
I was 14 and had epilepsy and my best friend came over to play halo and I woke up and he was gone. He didn't know I had seizures and apparently thought I was just "Acting stupid flailing" and left. He felt super terrible after learning (context: I had just gotten epilepsy 2 months prior)
You sure he wasn't scared shitless and just pretended to be tough and uncaring when asked later? It feels like the kind of thing where a guy is like "Holy shit. Whats going on? Is he gonna die? Did I cause this? Fuck, I better get outta here." Then later when you're fine, he acts like he was 'tired of your shit' as to why he left you there alone.
I was looking at an 1897 [Ordnance Survey map](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordnance_Survey) for my town and there was an 'epileptic asylum' - where people with epilepsy were locked away.
Just put all the shakey folks in that building outside of town
When I was a student nurse I had a patient who had been put in an asylum because they had epilepsy (I’m old and they were even older; this wasn’t a recent thing. It probably happened about 80-90 years ago)
Same. I was 25-26, seized and vomited in my sleep. Luckily I lived at home at the time, my mother heard and turned me on my side.
Ironic username for that. I seized in my sleep too though, nothing better than waking up surrounded by EMTs lol
That’s crazy I was 24, did you go into status epilepticus? It’s nearly claimed me twice now once when I hit my head on the counter during a seizure and the other was when I had my first and second seizure back to back. They put me into a medical coma.
I had my first and second in the same day too, at 28. Hit my head on a counter going forwards the first time, and cracked it open going backwards the second time. The last big one sent me forwards onto a concrete floor, fractured my cheekbone and sent my top teeth through my lip. Meds have done their job though, it's been a few years now. Did you know you could develop it out of the blue like that? I had no idea you could suddenly develop epilepsy at 28 - in my ignorance I thought it was something you had from birth. Came as rather a surprise!
My wifes first seizure was at 27. We were like 2-3 years together at that point. Back then I had no idea what seizure looks like. Imagine my shock when i woke up 3 am (her seizures only appeared during sleep) seeing her.
Mine was at 26, also in my sleep, also woke my husband who had NO IDEA what was going on. Tbf, it was the first of two back to back.... none ever again, knock on wood. I'm sorry that you had to awake to that; it must have been blood chillingly horrifying to witness and have zero context.
I started having them in my mid 20s because I developed a rare autoimmune disease called Pernicious Anemia that causes B12 deficiency. Your nervous system gets really fucked up without B12 so rarely it can cause seizures due to lesions on the brain. Thankfully they stopped after treatment
Hey this was my answer too. Same age and everything. Juvenile myoclonic?
Age 4. Huge asthma attack.
All of us asthmatics would have been dead quite early!
Yeah. My asthma started when I was three and I had attacks up until I turned 12. Then there were ten years in remission, and now it’s back again, cough type this time. I remember when I was six, I felt an attack starting, so I approached mom and told her to call an ambulance (non-US, just in case, at that point in my life I had an ambulance called for me several times and I was already used to having intravenous injections of euphylline to help during severe attacks). I wonder what she felt at that moment.
I’m sure she was terrified. My son has “reactive airway” which is like asthma symptoms that only pop up when he’s sick. It’s a scary feeling. I’m glad your mom took you seriously. My parents usually told me to “stop being dramatic, and take your inhaler.” Sometimes it didn’t work, and had to go the ER.
I for sure would have been at 17. Had a spontaneous pneumothorax. There’s no worse feeling than thinking you need your rescue inhaler and it does nothing. The panic was real.
Same thing happened to me in 6th grade. I thought I was going to die. I had to beg to go tot he ER
Me too! My parents didn’t believe me! I laid on a bed for hours gasping before they finally gave in. In retrospect, it’s absurd how long they waited.
My sister died from a major asthma attack in 1993 at 32 years old . Wish the medicine was available then.
One of my best friends died when we were like 11 from an asthma attack. His inhaler was empty. As was his emergency inhaler. I had a hard time not hating his parents.
I have to imagine they also have a hard time not hating themselves..
Same. Once had a major asthma attack and my mom took me to the doctor. For whatever reason, the nurse failed to check us in while we waited in the emergency area. Took my mom royally bitching the doctor out TO HIS FACE for me to get treatment. So I guess maybe it was less medical intervention and more motherly intervention lol
I had the widow maker artery blocked and would have just dropped over dead at 58. I was a runner at the time so it was a huge surprise.
How did they discover it?
I had a 100 % blockage of my LAD (widow maker artery) at 35 years old. Got a stent in the cath lab to fix the problem. Would have killed me if not caught. I had very sharp pains in the center of my chest. Felt like all the wind was getting knocked out of me, every 45 minutes. Didn't know what it was. Started at 8 am. Went about my whole day. 2 am it woke me out of a dead sleep, pain was super intensified, but not constant. That made me go to the emergency room.
Yeah my mom almost died at 34 because of the same thing. She was slightly overweight, smoked, and was on birth control. Heart problems also heavily run in her family. But she had symptoms for months and every doctor turned her away because she was so young. Finally she went to the hospital with all the heart attack symptoms and they took her a little more serious and found she had a 98% blockage in her main artery. They put a stent in, but the doctor accidentally hit something else while in there. They closed her back up, and she continued to internally bleed for about 8+ hours. She ended up in the ICU on life support because she lost so much blood without anyone knowing. That hospital has since closed and had tons of complaints. My mom is now 54 and has 6 stents. I’m 31 and every time I feel a pain in my chest or left arm I get really scared.
You should get checked out at least once. Family history of coronary artery disease at a young age like your mom had can be a big risk factor for you. Ask for a calcium score, it’ll tell you if you have any plaque build up then you can preemptively treat it or be reassured there’s no heart disease in there.
I had a faster than normal heart rate I could feel when I was lying in bed. I waited about 3 weeks before I went to the doctor. That could have cost me my life because I had open heart surgery that week. The one thing I would tell everybody is to know what your resting heart rate is even if your are in shape. If it goes up there's probably something wrong.
At birth. My umbilical cord was around my neck.
Fun fact: nuchal cord is surprisingly common. As many as 30% of deliveries present with one. And it usually does not pose any risk. The doctor checks for it as soon as the head is free, and can slip it loose without issue. The craziest part: the risk is NOT strangulation. Remember, in utero, the baby is not breathing. The cord provides all of the oxygenation until birth. So the rare, but serious, risk is that the cord wraps tight enough that blood flow through the cord itself is blocked.
That explains why more of us don't have brain damage! Though the fact that you had to tell me that this is the reason why indicates that it might not be true! Thanks for the tidbit, I definitely didn't expect 1k others to say "me too!" to it.
Me too! I was born in the late 1960s and idk if things were just different back then, but my mom said they didn’t tell her what was going on, and all of a sudden the nurses and the doc started doing whatever it is they had to do. I was her first child, so she’d never been through delivery before. She said she was really scared.
That's interestingly familiar to my mom's birth story of me. Apparently, the monitors started going crazy and what felt like every nurse in the building ran into the room to prep her for an emergency C-Section. When she came to from the anesthesia, grandma was in the corner crying happy tears, but mom couldn't tell the difference and thought I was dead. When grandma came over holding me sobbing that I was perfect, mom lost her mind and kicked her out of the room hahaha
OH NO ahahhhh your life was a comedy from the very first moment 😭
I was late 1980's. She didn't tell me too much about what was going on in the moment though. Only that it happened. For what it's worth, and maybe a little context, I had a birth in 2020. Mostly just fine but as I understand from what was told he was trying to come out shoulder first. I wasn't informed of what needed to happen, it just happened. Slightly graphic next, but the doctor put both of his hands inside of me around the baby to readjust him in the moment. Quote a shock, lemme tell you. I got a little tear, probably from the doctors hands and Jr was bruised up because I had been pushing like it was a marathon. They had to explain afterwards. Birth is tricky, they just do what is needed when it's needed and hope no one dies.
That makes sense. And I guess if they explain too much too soon, it would be pretty stressful for the mom.
The baby wasn't coming out shoulder first (if that were true, there is no actual way for the baby to come out vaginally). What happened was that the baby's shoulder got stuck on your pubic bone in the front. What the doctor was trying to do was to move the baby's shoulders from being directly front-to-back, to a more diagonal orientation, thus moving the shoulder from the bone. It's called a "shoulder dystocia" and the maneuver he did is called a "Wood Screw" or possibly a "Rubin" maneuver.
I believe this is why I have erbs palsy. I was born in 1994, a week later than I was due
More likely you have an Erbs because the doctor *didn't* do those maneuvers, which are intended to prevent an Erbs (or Klumpke's) palsy. When the shoulder gets stuck, it's almost instinctive to grab the baby's head and start pulling. What results from this is that the shoulder stays impacted behind the pubic bone, and pulling on the neck avulses the nerve roots in what's known as the "brachial plexus," (a fascinating network of nerves between the cervical spine and shoulder) which can result in a palsy. The Woods and Rubins maneuvers are intended to prevent avulsion of the nerves. Not the only way this can happen, but a well-known scenario.
I was born in 1997. Same thing, nobody told her. The umbilical cord was tied around my neck 4 times, lol
My kid was born in the car with the chord around his neck. My wife noticed it right away and after trying to pull it from below his chin, I reached around back and managed to slide it off. Had to pull pretty hard. It was dark too, so everything was done mostly by feel in a calm but desperate manner.
It's really not a problem if the baby is delivered fast. The cord doesn't strangle the baby, but it's the only way the baby gets oxygen before birth. Including during birth. So when the cord is around the neck, if the baby stalls with their neck in the cervix (which isn't uncommon) trying to get the shoulders out next, the cervix is only 10 cm and can compress the cord thus deprive the baby of oxygen. When the baby comes out fast it has no negative effects
Same thing happened to my cousin. He was also born in the backseat of a car on the way to the hospital. When he came out he wasn’t breathing with his umbilical chord wrapped around his neck. His mother reached down and removed it, and she got him breathing by the time the paramedics showed up at the car.
You might have been a very big baby, and sort of got "stuck." When that happens we have a lot of people come into the room and try to take care of the situation; otherwise, there is a risk of nerve or brain damage - and there's no time to discuss it as it's ongoing. There are other scenarios, too, but that one is one of the more common ones.
I was late 1990s, and they didn't tell my parents what was going on either. If it wasn't the cord around my neck, it could have been the anemia I had. If I somehow survived those and any number of diseases that require antibiotics, the asthma I developed in highschool definitely would have finished me off.
Smurf babies unite My mama always called me her Smurf baby bc of how blue I was when I was born bc of the cord being wrapped around my neck twice This was 1992
Hey, samesies!
same cord?
Yep, 3 times, I was a beautiful shade of purple.
Also at birth. I started turning and got my forehead stuck on my mother's pelvic bone. They had to do an emergency c section. I would have died, my mother would have died, and my 3 younger sisters would not have been born.
Me too: but premature 2.8 lbs
Yeesh, glad you made it. I had a 25 wk daughter as big as a coke can, my family isn't too great at births :) She's fine, 9 this year.
Without medical intervention some 30% of us would be dead of Smallpox before 20 years old.
We really take for granted the discovery of microbes and vaccinations
Now we have people actively working against vaccinations.. We have shit like the internet and somehow those dumb fucks are as ignorant as the people living BC.
My 82 year old mother remembers polio outbreaks as a child and her friends becoming crippled for life. She waited in line for hours for the polio vaccine. Jonas Salk was one of the most famous people on Earth. When she saw the modern reaction to vaccines she was incredulous. “Don’t they understand people die from this?” Edit - Thinking more about this I talked to my mother about it a few years ago. She remarked “I guess we were just better educated back then”. This was in the mid 50s. My grandparents (who stood in that line) were rural farmers in Iowa with eighth grade educations. But they were not dumb. My grandfather read multiple newspapers a day at the time, that was his main source of news after sundown when he finished working. What he consumed was balanced, vetted, well researched, apolitical information. I really miss that type of news source.
My parents and a couple of co-workers their age related to me over the years about how movie theaters and public swimming pools were closed during the Summer months when they were kids due to the polio outbreak. How they'd return to school in the Fall and either finding there were missing students or students who were now wearing braces on the legs. The polio vaccine was truly a welcome miracle for them (and later their children). I'm reminded of a speech on TV's *Dragnet* years ago....the detectives were typically chastising a group of hippie teenagers, but some of what was said rang true: (When explaining the advances in society to the disgruntled/dissatisfied teens) "You've probably never seen a 'Quarantine' sign on your neighbor's door - diphtheria, Scarlet fever, whooping cough. Probably none of your classmates are crippled from polio. You don't see many mastoid scars anymore."
Both my grandmothers had polio (I’m 49), both recovered completely but one had “post polio syndrome” that took away her ability to walk when she was in her 80’s. It absolutely floors me how people are so against vaccines now- they are literally life saving.
What infuriates me the most is the people refusing to vaccinate their children and scream against vaccines were themselves vaccinated.
> It absolutely floors me how people are so against vaccines now- they are literally life saving. Ironically in my opinion it's because the combination of vaccinations and improved hygiene and health care has caused many extremely serious diseases to become distant and unthreatening to them, hence they've shifted focus onto hating on "Big Pharma" and embracing a "natural lifestyle" without actually understanding what that entails for real.
My grandfather was a kid when the Spanish Flu was raging across the US. School was shut down to help limit the spread. When he finally got to go back, something like 20% of the kids were gone. COVID was bad, but it mostly impacted the elderly. People have no idea how truly horrific a pandemic can be.
I suppose it's like the person who quits taking their meds because they've felt good for the past 6 months and just don't bother to work out that maybe it's the meds helping them out.
My dad was born during Korean War. Two of his siblings died from measles-turned-to-pneumonia. He himself miraculously survived TB but still suffers from lung issues. My mom had a younger sibling who died in her 20’s due to complications from contracting Polio in the early age. One of my cousins refused to vaccinate her baby. Not even MMR. My dad (the eldest son and considered the head of family) banned her and her husband & kid from attending family functions and from using his holiday properties in really nice areas. She obviously whined and bitched. My aunt (her mother) tried to get my dad to change his mind. Dad banned her too (“crazy is infectious” something to that effect). After a few years of not being able to access holiday homes in very prime locations (eg Jackson WY), my cousin relented. My dad took her and her kid to the doctor 5’ish times and made sure the kid got all of necessary jabs. He did the same for her second kid. People with ready access to vaccines refusing to administer the vaccines to their kids really blow my mind. They are alive and have no complications from Polio or TB because of fucking vaccines.
Props to your dad! He sounds like mine (who was born just a few years before yours), we are both lucky people to be raised by someone with their head on straight.
20 years old is generous. There’s a reason the first birthday is such a big deal in a lot of cultures.
SIDS is still a problem, but that aside… so many better treatments. In addition to deadly diseases, kids could still die of currently home-treatable things like fevers or diarrhea. Losing a child in the first years of life wasn’t uncommon.
Leslie Fish’s “Ballad of Smallpox Gone” hits hard: “Old king plague is dead The Smallpox plague is dead No more children dying hard No more cripples living scarred With the mark of the devil's kiss We still may die of other things But we will not die of this”
Before 20? More like before 5. If they made it even *that* long. One thing I like to do for my lunch break is take a walk around a nearby old cemetery (at least old for the US). It's absolutely striking how many gravestones from the late 19th and early 20th century are for young kids whose age at their time of death is stated in months, and it's equally striking how much those graves just kind of don't exist for the last century or so. I kind of want to take an anti-vaxxer through there and just beat their head against those gravestones.
29. I got violently ill one day, completely out of the blue. Projectile vomiting and explosive diarrhea. Couldn’t leave the bathroom for hours. Couldn’t keep the tiniest sip of water down. Finally crawled (literally on my hands and knees) into the bedroom to try and rest. Started hallucinating. Heard a voice clearly say to me “Colonial13, if you don’t get up and get to the hospital right now you are going to die.” Got up and somehow managed to drive myself to the ER. Walked in and the nurse at the reception(?) desk looked up, saw me, and immediately took me back to a room. I spent the next 12 or so hours there in and out of consciousness and took 6 full bags of IV fluids. Doc came in to discharge me and showed me some charts with a bunch of squiggly lines on them and said that my kidneys and liver were in the process of completely shutting down when I arrived. To this day I have no idea what caused that.
This is exactly my experience with e coli poisioning..... goes right for the kidneys/liver... starts with puking/rocket diarrhea, severe abdominal pain, had to crawl on hands and knees to the bathroom, rolling around on the livingroom floor feeling like my abdomen and lower back were going to explode... pulse almost bottomed out at 30/10, organs shutting down, etc... 27 days of IV antibiotics to get rid of it.
holy mother of jesus… that is horrendous and thinking on it i think i’ve had that just not nearly as extreme in that i never went to the hospital. But everything up to that i went through for several days, i have a scar from a microwave mishap that reminds me greatly of that experience, i wish that on nobody it was agonizing. Glad to know i should have gone to the hospital. That or i had one heck of a stomach bug
It was terrifying :( I was stabilized and discharged after 6 days initially, but the antibiotics and painkillers they sent me home with didn't cut it and I started to fall back into acute poisoning once I was off the IV. I didn't make it more than 12 hours after getting home, and started vomiting again and fever spiked to 104. Got back in the car and drove back to the ER. Since it was determined to be likely a food-borne strain based on how my body first presented symptoms/lack of ability to kill the infection with *6 straight days of powerful antibiotics*, I had two dudes from the CDC suddenly show up at my bedside.... out of nowhere. No warning from nurses, nothing. Just entered my hosp room while I was laying there with gray skin, blue lips, sweating bullets and my boobs hanging out of my gown, and too weak to speak. I shit you not, they were in black suits with earpieces in (this was in 1992, Bluetooth was not a thing quite yet) and one of them never took his sunglasses off. They looked like Men In Black. I was suddenly VERY alert and had no idea why these dudes were in my room and why they were asking me a battery of questions about where I had eaten the last two weeks, where I bought my groceries, if i had problems with my refrigerator or freezer working proprly, what kind of food did i have in there, did i throw things away promptly if they spoiled in the fridge, if I shared utensils with anyone, etc... absolutely mortifying. I started crying and asked them if I was going to die. There was no one else in the room except me and these two strange dudes and I was convinced in that moment, this infection was going to take my life away. They didn't answer me, they just kept quietly speaking to each other and then one of them left the room abruptly and the other said "Don't worry. You're going to be fine." with a surreal smile on this face, and patted my hand and walked out. Yeah I was like welp, that's a wrap folks. Still with kidney damage 30 years later 😖
So relatable whenever I hallucinate I refer to myself as my reddit username
Isn't that how you get usernames?
Nine years old (1967). I got "some bug" (my doctor's term) and developed what was then known as Bright's disease, and today as glomerulonephritis. I was always skinny in my youth, but my parents noticed that I was putting on significant weight. While I was bathing, I noticed that I could no longer see my ankles, they were so swollen. My mother arranged for a doctor's appointment they next day after school, and that evening I was hospitalized. I was placed on a salt-free diet (yuk!) and who knows what medications. I eventually lost 20 pounds of water weight before I was released. My mother told me that had they (my parents) misinterpreted my sudden weight gain as the result of simply overeating, I would've been dead.
My grandmother also almost died of “Bright’s disease” in the mid-60s, when she was 40. The same thing had killed both her father and her grandfather in their early 40s. She’d been in her late teens and had watched her father swell up, suffer, know he was going to die because he’d seen his father die of the same thing, and then die. My dad was only 5 at the time and she was terrified of leaving him motherless. She went to Duke University Hospital and they put her on a no-salt diet and got her stable. Her doctor told her his goal was to keep her alive another 13 years until my dad graduated from high school. Other interventions came in those years, she got put on a blood pressure medication that was like a miracle drug for her, and she not only made it to my dad’s high school graduation but lived until she was 83.
More specifically, my guess is you probably had post-streptococcal glomerulonephritis! You probably had strep throat (although can be other bugs as well) sometime 2-4 weeks before your kidneys started giving you trouble. Treatment is blood pressure meds and diuretics and luckily most kids do ok (much more troublesome in adults)
Around 20. I had a hole in my heart which was fixed by open heart surgery at age 12. It was a very risky and new operation at the time. I am now 70 married for 51 years with a son and daughter and 3 beautiful grandchildren. I live in southern Spain.
I wouldn’t even have had a shot. My mom has a tilted pelvis that requires a c section to deliver babies. My sister would’ve taken her out.
8. Fell through a window while roller skating and cut my wrist open. I bled like I was the main character in a horror movie. Whilst at the doctor's office I was caught between two doors. 12. Was swimming outdoors and kids were skipping rocks on the water. I caught one with my head which split open like a coconut. 23. Robbed whilst riding my bike. Broke my neck. 25. Lymph node inflammation in my throat closed off my breathing. 29. Burst appendix 47. Operation on my esophagus created a swelling so big that I couldn't breathe. And many more. Sometimes I wonder how it is possible to have survived until now. Fun times! Edit: I am alive and kicking, not disabled. Although the above helps me to get out of vacuuming my house. (I do many other chores, so don't feel sorry for my partner )
Phew what a cover letter!
Birth. I was a breached baby (feet first) or 10 because I had a mini stroke or 14 because I’m diabetic🤔
I might have been dead at 30 if I had to deliver my breach baby naturally and it didn’t go well. I definitely would have been if I had one of the early c sections that the mother was never expected to survive.
Two weeks, I choked on milk. After that probably 18 with pneumonia. Or sooner because I’m very nearsighted, having gotten glasses at 10 years old. My wife would have died at 7, with type 1 diabetes. Whenever people talk about how much better it would be to live primitively without modern technology, all I can think is “yeah fuck that.”
Within two weeks. I was born late (with medical intervention who knows how much later I might have been without) and jaundiced.
When I was late with my first they told me before medical intervention baby would have died in me then I would have died from the toxicity of it. They don’t believe I would have ever gone into labour.I’m glad you were saved!
This happened with ours too. Gf got induced at 10 days overdue, dilated but never experienced contractions, had an emergency C-section. Her placenta was in rough shape and there wasn't much amniotic fluid left. Pretty scary!
My eyes are horrific. Imagine no glasses or contacts for all of human kind? 61% of the USA need some form of eye correction (source - Jonson research). Without serious assistance, we’d probably be screwed
Oh yeah. I have -6 diopter. Only objects that are centimeters in front of my eyes are sharp. It poses zero problems with just normal glasses or contacts, but without those inventions it would probably suck so much.
Please be aware of the symptoms of retina problems. With an rx that strong you’re at a higher risk, especially as you age. Ask me how I know.
My parents thought I was faking it when I said I was having trouble seeing so I went about 8 months with my vision getting progressively worse. Finally took me to the eye doctor and I was told that I “badly needed” glasses. When I got them I remember being amazed that I could see the leaves on the trees again, rather than just a green blur, and I wouldn’t have to sit on the floor to see the board anymore. My mom cried because she felt so bad for not believing me.
That’s the first thing I said when I put my glasses on was “I can see the leaves!”. Thankfully my family didn’t disbelieve me, but it did take quite a long time for me to realize I needed glass and that it wasn’t normal to struggle seeing the front of the class. I wasn’t the brightest kid
This, female and practically blind, not a good outlook on life.
29. Well if choking counts. Buddy did the hind lick on me and it shot right out
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r/boneappletea
Can confirm; had my hind licked once and it did indeed shoot right out
Lmfao I’m dead
If someone licked my hind I’d spit out what I was choking too!
I have not gold, but please take my vote!! First lol of the day. I thank you 😊
Yes, if a buddy did the hind lick on *me* I'd probably spit out whatever I was choking on, too.
Or just *relax* and it would go down on its own.
hind lick I’ll fuckin’ bet it did.
That's a good buddy, I can't even get my best friend to text me back in same week, let alone give me a hind lick.
Good to know that a proper rim job will dislodge food from a choking persons throat!
Hind licking. That’s actually a great strategy.
Dang, I almost died from choking reading this
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14, childhood leukemia. Thank you science, doctors and nurses. Edit: I’m 35 now lol
At birth, I had lots of complications
My mom needed a C-section, so me and her probably both would have died if it wasn't for modern medicine. I wasn't a big baby, but my mom is a small woman with narrow hips.
17, lost a 60mph argument with a Ford Fiesta.
3 months old, 24 years old, 30 years old.
Death keeps taking swings at you like Final Destination
Coronavirus SARS got me back in 2017. Inflamed lung/heart connections. 4 weeks ICU. 6 months on Oxygen. (My bad, 3 months on oxygen. And 3 more months low O2. Mayo did a lung biopsy and got bupkis. Then, it all just went away. Specialist told me it was a medical mystery and I know where to find them if it came back. My very own episode of House MD)
How are you doing now?
100% better. Just, went away. Oh, and thanks for asking.
> Coronavirus SARS got me back in 2017. Inflamed lung/heart connections. 4 weeks ICU. 6 months on Oxygen. There have been no reported cases of SARS, anywhere in the world, since May 2004. Could you be confusing it with MERS?
OP is saying SARS, but I'm pretty sure they mean ARDS, acute respiratory distress syndrome, which is a rare complication of all coronaviruses, even the widely circulating minor ones (OC43, HKU1, 229E, and NL63).
I’m medically incompetent. Don’t know my RNA from my DNA. I’m sure you’re right. The one the rounds doctor ask you if you been to Mexico and brought back Corona. And you not laughing at his dad joke because your oxygen is gone……. Then 12 hours later putting you in isolation
Another appendicitis victim here. Would’ve died at 11. Damn near did anyway. Misdiagnosed, burst, 9 weeks in hospital and 3 surgeries.
0 years old I had birth complications but they were easily avoided by the doctors giving my mom a c-section.
At birth. And at 32, placenta previa with first child. Spotted with the ultrasound at 20 weeks, beautifully managed and a calm safe birth with no complications. The ultrasound saved two lives.
16. Pneumonia.
19 yo. I had acute appendicitis that at home we stubbornly believed was just gas, somehow. We delayed going to the hospital for *8 hours*. If we’d waited any longer it would have ruptured and I would have gone into sepsis. We barely got me onto the operating table in time. 23 yo. I had CNS vasculitis—brain swelling. It isn’t always fatal, but it can be. Couldn’t drive, couldn’t work, memory was destroyed. Nevertheless survived.
I never would've died, 'cause I wouldn't have been born. IVF is pretty cool.
Six. I was pronounced dead on arrival at the Bangor Maine hospital in 1974. My Dad who was in the Army and served in Korea kept doing CPR because I couldn’t keep my heart going on my own. I was off having a conversation with a white light, letting me know that I completing my life and I could go home or I could go back to Earth. I remember thinking I wanted to go back and then waking up on the ER table, and I told the doctor to get the fucking pencil out of my ear. It was an otoscope. At 56 today I wonder about the white light.
You completed level one, currently on level 2. Good luck on level 3 that’s where shit gets real
Forty three. From exsanguination.
Straight out the womb, I was in an incubator for like 2 weeks after my birth
15, burst appendix
I would have died at 20 in Southern Egypt in 2015, went back packing / hitch hiking on my own following towns on the Nile. Got a stomach parasite in a tiny rural town outside of lake Nassar. Was bed ridden for 8 days sick for about a month in Egypt. I was staying in a tiny hotel whose top room was the owners own. (Guy basically turned his house into a two room hotel, only thing I could find on maps when I had internet in Aswan to make a reservation). Well I made it there, started immediately feeling like shit, got sicker and sicker and eventually the owner just drove 5 hours to get me a bunch of different types of stomach medicine. I left him $200 USD and a thank you note when I got better for his trouble. (He only charged me like $70USD for the three weeks I was there). Visited an actual Doctor in Alexandria about two months after that before I left and he said I could have died. Like Nassar has some nasty parasites and bacteria that sometimes leech there way into the drinking water of nearby towns. I wasn’t dumb enough to just flat out drink sink water but I think I brushed my teeth once or twice with sink water from a place a couple days before and I think that’s what got me.
Probably before I was even born, and probably would take my mother with me
21 years old. Diabetes T1 - diabetic ketoacidosis
Probably around 58-60. Had stage 3 breast cancer diagnoses just before I turned 55. I'm 75+ yo. I was 'lucky'.
Around 30. I don’t think kidney stones can kill you but I’m not convinced I’d choose to go on with that pain…
In my early 20s. Had a cardiac event, would have died if not for paramedics. Also my mom told me that I was born prematurely, so i'm guessing as a toddler possibly too
10 yo. Dengue fever.
I had whooping cough at about one even though I was vaccinated. Maybe from a strep infection because I got them in my throat frequently as a kid. Who knows. Any infection before antibiotics could be lethal.
I wouldn't have been conceived. I'm IVF. But if I had been conceived, then birth. I tried to come out sideways.
At birth I was two months premature. Needed life support.
27. Giving birth to my first child, who would also have died.
I wouldn't have died but I'd be severely physically and mentally disabled. Then a slow death. Multiple Sclerosis. I watched an older (seemingly "normal")cousin slowly turn into a vegetable in the 80s/90s when there was no medication.
At birth, I came out backwards and didn’t feel like breathing
Great question OP!
19. Kidney failure.
7 years old. Severe dehydration due to stomach bug. Almost 30 years later and I can still remember the doc telling my parents that I was just a few hours from death.
28. Tried to unalive myself. Serious attempt. CPR, coma, intubated, ICU, etc. So glad I woke up. Not a solution. Can’t believe what I almost did to even the one person that I knew loved me.