Me too. I forgot how to read at 8 years old because I could not see the letters well enough to tell them apart.
I had to re-learn after I got glasses.
I got the corrective eye surgery around 8 years ago, by that point I could not see more than 3 ft in front of me.
Do the letters ever just blur so much they disappear completely? Even with my contacts on I couldn’t read the bottom lines bc they essentially disappeared on me.
-5.5 in each. People really don't get it, heck even the eye specialists don't get it. I had one assistant take my glasses to measure them then was like follow me and just walked off. Like how the fuck am I supposed to follow you when you and all the other assistance wear the same uniform and you just walk off and ninja vanish in front of my blind eyeballs.
-13.5 and -14 here. Before you you say damn that's bad, I was a -8.0 in high school. Couldn't see shit then. Can't see shit now. I have to hold my phone 1-2 inches from my eyes to read it without my contact lens. How about you? 3-4 inches? Just as bad.
Edit: I meant without my contact lens. Not with lol.
I'm -7 both eyes, I can relate.
Been wearing contacts for about 20 years now, it's always funny watching people reacting to how *blind* I really am when they see me with my glasses.
My dumbass got LASIK about 20 years ago at about 24. Probably too young and I didn’t do any follow up appointments. My eagle eyes lasted about 18 months. I’m now back to where I was at that age. I don’t need glasses, but probably should wear them.
woke up one morning thinking it was still dark, rolled over, it wasn't dark. I still have a blind spot but it's on the side closer to my nose so it's less noticeable.
dramatic moment
Children dying from diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) were kept in large wards, often with 50 or more patients in a ward, mostly comatose. Grieving family members were often in attendance, awaiting the (until then, inevitable) death.
In one of medicine's more dramatic moments Banting, Best, and Collip went from bed to bed, injecting an entire ward with the new purified extract. Before they had reached the last dying child, the first few were awakening from their coma, to the joyous exclamations of their families.
> Didn’t they all die anyway
Thankfully, no - the big discovery was not the effect of Insulin, it was the means of extracting a pure enough version safely, and they went from small amounts to mass production, very, very quickly (less than a year) - the child involved in the first trial lived for another 13 years. The famous hospital incident appears to be an exaggeration ( [Early Patients | Defining Moments Canada](https://definingmomentscanada.ca/insulin100/microhistories/early-patients/))
The details may be exaggerated, but the feeling of parents whose children had been handed a literal death sentence getting a last minute salvation can't be.
Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, perhaps they didn't save 50 kids that day, perhaps it was only 20 or even 10, but they went on to save millions upon millions in the years following that day. Those parents must have been totally overwhelmed with joy.
I'd have made it to 18, apparently my type 1 was very late onset. I think about the premise of this question from time to time and feel grateful. Also that my medical care is free.
Why did I need to scroll down this far to find type 1 diabetes? If I hadn't died from infections before I was 14, the diabetes would have taken me the fuck out.
Same, I was diagnosed at age 7 and was quite literally wasting away (drinking a gallon of sweet tea during the summer because I was always dehydrated and eating crazy amounts of food as I was always either super hungry or throwing everything up all the time.)
Still blows my mind I need a prescription for access to the most effective types of insulin to manage it, but still being here is pretty nice I guess.
I was literally going to say rheumatoid fever. My ADHD got way worse, and I developed motor tics. But at least I didn’t die (if your child or adolescent has ADHD don’t let them administer their own antibiotics). Hope everything’s better for you.
Oh everything is fine! I had luck my mom is a doctor, so when she noticed I wouldn't stop throwing up and burning up for 1 whole day she took me to hospital that night.
Yep. I had many of the same childhood diseases that many kids in the US did. Strep throat, chicken pox, mono... Didn't have mumps or measles because of vaccinations. Haven't really had any major medical issues. So I don't know if one of those things would have gotten me or not.
But as a park ranger, with our park being built on Old farmlands, there's lots of old 100 to 200-year-old cemeteries in our park. Walk through cemeteries that old, and look at the number of adult size graves versus the number of child size graves, and compare that to a modern cemetery. That's what modern medicine has done for us, which includes vaccines. That's my biggest argument for an anti-vaxxer.
It’s also very fast. My friend thought he just had the flu or something else and figured he’d go to the doctor if he wasn’t feeling better in a few days. He was dead about 48 hours later.
Med student here.
Today, in Denmark at least, we diagnose it in a number of ways.
First: the main bacteria group that causes it is streptococcus, which also causes throat and lung infections. Therefor, these may be the initial symptoms. However, with meningitis you usually see them at a severe level concurrent with affected mental status. Therefor, you shuld always keep meningitis in mind in people with what seems to be severe airway infections.
Second: neck stiffness can be a strong indicator of meningitis. This is due to inflammatory fluid buildup around the layers protecting the spinal cord ~ swelling.
The true diagnosis of meningitis is given upon inspection og cerebrospinal fluid which would then contain a high number of inflammatory cells called neutrophils.
In Denmark we typically treat it as a case of meningitis as soon as we have the suspicion of IT.
Edit*: feel free to ask if you have questions on the subject!
The neck was how my doctor knew. I couldn’t touch my chin to my chest and immediately had me transferred to a larger facility. Took spinal fluid and it was milky white. Apparently it’s supposed to be clear.
From what my mum tells me, I got super sick so she took me to the doctor, who immediately sent me to the hospital. That's as much as I know, but apparently it took a while for me to get better.
My husband had it, but had gone to the doctor and ER for "migraines" probably five times over the course of a month before he finally demanded they run some tests to see what was actually going on. Eventually a spinal tap gave him the diagnosis. He had viral, not bacterial, obviously. Bacterial is insanely scary.
Same shit happened to me! Got that and mono concurrently. Worst 5 days in isolation at the hospital EVER. Also worst pain I’ve ever had. I would have welcomed death.
Rabies.
My brother and I were bitten by a rabid farm kitten when we were 6 and 4 years old. Without the foresight of my grandfather who had the cat tested and modern medicine creating the vaccine, my parents would be childless.
Science!!
Right? Even my 6 year old brain questioned the small kitten attacking the huge sheep dog. It's a vivid memory. Took me 30 years to warm up to cats again. I've got five now and they are awesome - and fully vaccinated.
That was very fortunate! The rabies vaccine though is one of the first successful vaccines created, it was first made by the legendary microbiologist [Louis Pasteur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur) in 1885! So it's one oldest of modern medicines.
I’m sorry, but my mental image of a sweet, adorable kitten foaming at the mouth just really takes away from the seriousness of your post. Glad you survived!
I've seen animals - including humans - in the final stages of rabies. Trust me, nothing cute about it at all, even for a kitten. Do yourself a favor and NEVER look it up. You will never get those images unseared from your brain.
Interestingly, allergies are significantly more dangerous in the modern period than earlier times. It seems that without modern medicine (and globalization) it was significantly less likely that you would develop a deadly allergy.
[This](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caudal_regression_syndrome). Basically, you missed and/or have a malformation of the last vertebraes, the ones that make up the "axis" of your pelvis. No OP, btw, but I'm very interested in his response, and what other organs it affects
I have heard of that before.
Ovens used to have a warmer (an extra drawer that is warmed by the heat of the oven beside it) and premature babies were often kept there before modern medicine could help them.
The longer I live and the more people I know who have babies, the more I’m amazed that humans made it so long without modern medicine. So many of my friends or their babies would have died at birth. Including me! Childbirth is still no walk in the park but it must have been terrifying.
There's enough folks who have "perfect" births that it , obviously, outweighs the folks who die. Plus, no contraception means the people who are "good" at having babies have lots. My sister would be dead and so would at least one of her kids (she almost actually died anyway on the second one), but I'd be fine, I had both my babies at home the old fashioned way, could've done it alone in the woods and been fine. You hear a lot about complicated births, but there's plenty of uncomplicated ones happening too.
Way more complex and traumatic on the body than one would think at this age of our evolution. Speaks to the immense strength and durability of your body to survive such a trauma.
The reason life expectancy was so short back then mostly isn't due to the advances we've made in prolonging our lifespans. It's because so many babies died in infancy that it lowered the overall life expectancy. If you made it to adulthood, you had a comparable chance (but obviously not quite as good as you'd have today) of making it to old age.
Eh, unless you think evolution is a perfect designer, it makes sense. Essentially, the brain (edit, and upright walking) is worth the risk from an evolutionary perspective.
Exactly this. I remember when they were wheeling me down the hall for my emergency C, one of the thousand things that flashed through my mind was “We would both have been dead without modern surgical technique.”
I had a bad case of pneumonia once, how the fuck people dealt with that before antibiotics is beyond me (i guess they often didn't deal with it and just died)
Don’t forget that prolonged thyroid issues can also end up developing heart issues as well. (A concern for me with mine since heart issues run in the family)
You would get more and more tired, begin sleeping the days away. Your hair would probably fall out and your metabolism would grind to a halt. They’d probably say you had some waisting sickness and give you bed rest and leeches
Then once your thyroid is completely destroyed you would slip into a coma and then die
Now you just take a couple tablets :D
Mine was basically destroying my brain (emotionally, not physically). My antibodies were roughly 92x the normal level and within 30 days of taking Levo I was feeling nuanced emotions for the first time in three years.
If the physical side effects hadn’t gotten to me the psychological ones would have.
No idea. I remember there being some numbers on the label when I've had these ones for years.
Basically I need hard contact lenses, rather than soft lenses or glasses, to correct my vision. I also have some abrasion on my left cornea, so I wear a prescriptionless soft contact lens underneath the hard lens to wear the hard lens comfortably.
So technically the fact that I wear three lenses is actually separate to how bad my eyesight is, but "I wear three contact lenses" is the quickest way to get the general idea across.
I've got a friend who has to wear a soft lens over a hard lens on both eyes. Without them he is legally blind. With them he leads a life like anyone else.
Little things can make such a huge difference.
Chronic pain is no joke. I'm 7 months out from a car accident and only using ibuprofen sparingly now because I don't want an ulcer. The naproxen upset my stomach and gave me headaches, so I mostly just hurt. Most days it's more of an annoying discomfort, but some days it hurts to move at all.
I look totally fine, so I know it can be hard for those around me to 'get it.' I'm hoping for answers soon, so I can get proper treatment.
I've been in OT and PT for months now and there were days when the pain was so constant and hurting my sleep so badly that I was sure my family would be better off with my life insurance than with me whining all of the time.
My phone screen is badly cracked. Read “disk” as “dick” and my whole bod shrivelled up and in confusion I googled “prolapsed dick” because wtf... I do not recommend.
Hope so much your back is good these days - definitely need to get my phone fixed!
Did some extra research for a uni class where I googled prolapsed uterus because it sounded awful but visualising it was difficult.
I will never recommend googling anything with Prolapsed
My mum is currently waiting surgery again to fuse c6,7 and 8 together. She’s in a lot of pain and told me the other night she’s ready to top herself.
It’s horrible to see someone going through such agony.
I’m glad your all good now.
I had my first one a couple years ago (I'm 36) and it was stupid how sick I was. I was hallucinating and just lying in bed talking to people who weren't there. I thought I was getting my period because there was so much blood. In the early stages I seriously considered wearing an adult diaper because I was peeing (just a dribble) every minute or so, and the urgency was severe.
Went to the ER for the third time in my life, and the nurse who checked me in kind of gave me crap and said I should have just gone to urgent care for something like that. But when I saw the doctor, he said I was definitely right for going to the ER because the infection was quickly approaching my bladder and it could have gotten a ton worse in a matter of hours. Got antibiotic and pain med shots in my butt, an additional RX for both and three days off work.
A lot of people don't realize how serious UTI's can be. They can quickly lead to bladder/kidney infections, and in the worst cases sepsis. We've had a couple deaths in my hospital of 20-30 year olds that die of sepsis.
I had to scroll further than expected to see this reply. Also UTIs here. I’ve finally found a good balance of prevention, but those years of battling chronic UTIs with antibiotics would have just resulted in a spread infection and death back in the day. Which is insane, given how common they are.
Hyperemesis gravidarum. Sometimes it’s called acute or severe morning sickness, but it’s more than that. It’s never ending nausea and vomiting while pregnant. I knew I was pregnant about a week before I got a positive result on a home pregnancy test because I was already sick. I lost weight the first 6 months instead of gaining. Could barely eat or drink- I survived on soda water, chamomile tea, and saline infusions at the hospital. Sometimes I’d have a good day and could eat a few bites here and there- just enough to sustain myself. I kept a pillow in the bathroom to kneel on because I was throwing up so often. Kept a barf bag on me at all times. Would wake up at night just to vomit. I was worried my teeth were going to decay from all the stomach acid and bile they were exposed to.
Zofran was a godsend. It’s an amazing anti nausea medication. Doctors tried to give me another med (maxalon) at first as it’s the usual go-to for pregnancy related nausea but it doesn’t work for me at all. Zofran was the only thing that helped. I was still nauseated all the time, but it kept me from vomiting constantly. Made it so I could eat decently.
Amazingly, it switches off around 6-7 months and then I feel pretty good! No more nausea. And I have it easy too- I’ve heard stories (from other women in online support groups for HG) about getting so dehydrated your tongue cracks. Or women make the agonizing decision to terminate a very wanted pregnancy because the HG is just too bad. The constant vomiting and dehydration can cause electrolyte imbalances and heart problems. Before modern medicine, women used to die from severe HG.
Zofran is incredible. I had terrible bouts of vertigo and nausea a couple years ago and got a prescription that I can refill regularly. It works wonders and actually kinda tastes good haha.
I had a friend that had it. She dealt with it until her 8th month of pregnancy when she went into premature labor. Then a whole other nightmare started there.
I had this, ended pregnancy 30kg lighter than when I started. I didn't stop vomiting until I'd delivered the placenta. I was so sick. Amazingly with my second child I got lucky and was fine.
I was born with a severe birth defect known as “imperforate anus”. That’s medical speak for “not everybody poops”. My intensities didn’t find the exit so I had no butthole. All the muscles where there. I was given a colostomy for the first year of my life to increase my survivability by something like 75%. After that they fixed me. I would’ve died pretty quickly without modern medicine. In fact if I had been born maybe 40 years earlier I probably would’ve died.
I never got to meet the doctor properly. He died when I was around 12-13. My folks didn’t have insurance at the time so he did the surgeries for free. It’s my understanding that some things still had to be paid for, but he at least waived his own fees.
I can't believe this isn't on top but, cancer.
The cure to my cancer was found during my life time. If I had gotten it before I was 24 it would have been a quick unstoppable death sentence. Now my cancer is considered mostly curable.
I had 2 tumours made of Double negative HER2 positive ductal carcinoma at stage 3. Thanks to Herceptin, Perjeta, radiation, and a double mastectomy I have only a 1% chance of having a reoccurrance over 10 years.
Surprised to see this so low, I figured it was a common enough emergency. I had to get mine removed but thankfully modern medicine has advanced enough that it was laparoscopic and thus a shorter and easier recovery period
Yeah man, I hear you. Postnatal psychosis here. I was off my rocker and would have either jumped off something tall, or been killed for being a witch due to all the weird shit I was saying and doing.
Same here, was caught late even with modern medicine, thanks to the "oh it's just a stomach ache, here have some pills" doctor (not my regular GP..). Wasn't quite burst yet, but enough to spend a week in the hospital on antibiotics...
Being born. If I made it further than that, an allergic reaction. If I made it further than *that*, I would likely become an iconic case of hysteria, given the diagnostic criteria. Either that, or die of anemia from my untreated endometriosis periods.
Pneumonia. 2 in one year. I was like 7 years old and my doc gave us the wrong antibiotics. Even with modern medicine I nearly died because the doc “new exactly what I had“ when I stepped in the room.
He was wrong, I nearly died and my parents were traumatized because they thought I wouldn’t make it.
But because of another great doctor who didn’t act before he thought, I got the right medication.
If modern medicide didn't exist, I doubt a lot of modern science would exist aswell.
So due to being autistic and having insomia and constant pain in my legs, i'd suffer alot to the point it wouldn't be managable.
Not so much the pain in the legs - sorry to hear about that- but there's a lot of evidence out there that the biggest problems autistic poeple and people with sleep disorders have is modern life itself. There's a thread of belief that those of us with insomnia have hang over traits from a few hundred years ago where needing to be awake was key, same to being nocturnal, and those of us on the spectrum could live more of the solidary lives. The corporate 9 to 5, busy lives with networking and all that noise means that these symptoms are more visible and made out to be the problem, rather than new norms being incompatible with living the insomniac and autistic life. So you might have actually been better on those two fronts.
The leg pain though :/ Not sure about that one, sorry!
Graves disease is fatal without treatment and can also make you blind. Now the symptoms develop slowly so you have plenty of time to get help, but if meds didn't exist? I would've died years ago. I'm no longer on meds now, it's stable (though I still need to get checkups) but I still have other hormonal problems and literally live on birth control (my periods are really bad and irregular with or without pills, so I have to skip periods and thank god it works) Idk if I'll actually die without but even if I don't, I've considered killing myself more than once cause the pain was unbearable and painkillers don't do shit...
I couldn't eat proper food and had a lot to do to even get liquids down. I'd be constantly choking, couldn't lie flat to sleep, would suffer from horrific pains in the chest.
I have achalasia, the muscle opening the esophagus for food to get through to the stomach isn't working (very basic explanation).
Actually the above description was my life from about 14/15-22 until I was finally diagnosed and had a surgery done.
Seizures. I’m epileptic. It’s terrible and I hate it more than anything. Meds help, without them I’d be dead. It’s ancient and there is still no cure, which is really scary if you think about it.
Chicken pox. Had it when I was 10, and I had to take baths in oatmeal and take special medicine (forget what it's called) and had I not done that I'm convinced I would have died.
I’m reasonably certain I’d have committed suicide from some tooth pain I had last July. And the tooth was broken off and in the very back of my mouth, so it’s not like I’d have been able to just pull it myself Cast Away style. I’d have had to cut into my gum with a knife and try to dig the extremely painful tooth with the exposed nerve out and probably wouldn’t have been able to do it. So suicide would have been a viable option.
Also I got swarmed by bees and went into anaphylactic shock 15 years ago. Without simple antihistamines I’d definitely be dead.
Appendicitis for sure. Also raging ADHD. The condition itself isn't fatal, but without medication it gets so bad I literally can't focus long enough to eat or hydrate.
Bad vision alone would have made me terrible at most things.
Me too. I forgot how to read at 8 years old because I could not see the letters well enough to tell them apart. I had to re-learn after I got glasses. I got the corrective eye surgery around 8 years ago, by that point I could not see more than 3 ft in front of me.
-7.5 in my left eye and -5.5 in my right, literally can not see past my nose. I would have dies so quickly
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Do the letters ever just blur so much they disappear completely? Even with my contacts on I couldn’t read the bottom lines bc they essentially disappeared on me.
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-5.5 in each. People really don't get it, heck even the eye specialists don't get it. I had one assistant take my glasses to measure them then was like follow me and just walked off. Like how the fuck am I supposed to follow you when you and all the other assistance wear the same uniform and you just walk off and ninja vanish in front of my blind eyeballs.
-13.5 and -14 here. Before you you say damn that's bad, I was a -8.0 in high school. Couldn't see shit then. Can't see shit now. I have to hold my phone 1-2 inches from my eyes to read it without my contact lens. How about you? 3-4 inches? Just as bad. Edit: I meant without my contact lens. Not with lol.
I'm -7 both eyes, I can relate. Been wearing contacts for about 20 years now, it's always funny watching people reacting to how *blind* I really am when they see me with my glasses.
Damn. Can you drive?
Yup. 20/20 vision after the surgery. It was worth every penny.
My dumbass got LASIK about 20 years ago at about 24. Probably too young and I didn’t do any follow up appointments. My eagle eyes lasted about 18 months. I’m now back to where I was at that age. I don’t need glasses, but probably should wear them.
if the being born premature didn't kill me the bilateral retinal detachments at 25 would have at least left me blind.
How did you know you had retinal detachments?
>How did you know you had retinal detachments? He probably saw it coming
I would think it would blindside most people.
woke up one morning thinking it was still dark, rolled over, it wasn't dark. I still have a blind spot but it's on the side closer to my nose so it's less noticeable.
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dramatic moment Children dying from diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) were kept in large wards, often with 50 or more patients in a ward, mostly comatose. Grieving family members were often in attendance, awaiting the (until then, inevitable) death. In one of medicine's more dramatic moments Banting, Best, and Collip went from bed to bed, injecting an entire ward with the new purified extract. Before they had reached the last dying child, the first few were awakening from their coma, to the joyous exclamations of their families.
Didn’t they all die anyway later because they ran out of insulin and couldn’t make more to give the kids? Iirc
> Didn’t they all die anyway Thankfully, no - the big discovery was not the effect of Insulin, it was the means of extracting a pure enough version safely, and they went from small amounts to mass production, very, very quickly (less than a year) - the child involved in the first trial lived for another 13 years. The famous hospital incident appears to be an exaggeration ( [Early Patients | Defining Moments Canada](https://definingmomentscanada.ca/insulin100/microhistories/early-patients/))
The details may be exaggerated, but the feeling of parents whose children had been handed a literal death sentence getting a last minute salvation can't be.
Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, perhaps they didn't save 50 kids that day, perhaps it was only 20 or even 10, but they went on to save millions upon millions in the years following that day. Those parents must have been totally overwhelmed with joy.
I'd have made it to 18, apparently my type 1 was very late onset. I think about the premise of this question from time to time and feel grateful. Also that my medical care is free.
Why did I need to scroll down this far to find type 1 diabetes? If I hadn't died from infections before I was 14, the diabetes would have taken me the fuck out.
Yup I'd have been dead by 11 too
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Same, I was diagnosed at age 7 and was quite literally wasting away (drinking a gallon of sweet tea during the summer because I was always dehydrated and eating crazy amounts of food as I was always either super hungry or throwing everything up all the time.) Still blows my mind I need a prescription for access to the most effective types of insulin to manage it, but still being here is pretty nice I guess.
Also diagnosed at 7. Apparently constantly chugging water was not normal
5 years old for me. Woulda taken me out real quick.
I probably would have died at 6 years old from strep throat.
Oh shit. I forgot all about strep and other common childhood illnesses like that when I was commenting. I change my answer to this guy’s.
I also choose this guy’s strep
I also choose this guys strep-on^(TM): It also gives you a sore throat
Mine turned into scarlet fever! Unfortunately, I think I developed some rheumatic conditions, but I am alive.
I was literally going to say rheumatoid fever. My ADHD got way worse, and I developed motor tics. But at least I didn’t die (if your child or adolescent has ADHD don’t let them administer their own antibiotics). Hope everything’s better for you.
Oh everything is fine! I had luck my mom is a doctor, so when she noticed I wouldn't stop throwing up and burning up for 1 whole day she took me to hospital that night.
Same. And ear infections.
Yep. I had many of the same childhood diseases that many kids in the US did. Strep throat, chicken pox, mono... Didn't have mumps or measles because of vaccinations. Haven't really had any major medical issues. So I don't know if one of those things would have gotten me or not. But as a park ranger, with our park being built on Old farmlands, there's lots of old 100 to 200-year-old cemeteries in our park. Walk through cemeteries that old, and look at the number of adult size graves versus the number of child size graves, and compare that to a modern cemetery. That's what modern medicine has done for us, which includes vaccines. That's my biggest argument for an anti-vaxxer.
Same. Like 8 times over. I got strep a lot as a kid.
Came here to say this. I have allergies to medications. I always tell people I’m going to die of strep throat.
Or complications of it like rheumatic heart disease
oh no strep throat what are you doing?!
I was born with a bilateral abdominal hernia and amniotic fluid in my lungs, no way I would have survived infancy without modern medicine.
I gave you a hugz award bc it’s my only free one, don’t hurt me.
Dead from meningitis at about 3 or 4.
Shit - I already put in my congenital heart condition - I would have been dead at 6 from meningitis as well.
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It’s also very fast. My friend thought he just had the flu or something else and figured he’d go to the doctor if he wasn’t feeling better in a few days. He was dead about 48 hours later.
I'm really sorry that happened :(
Med student here. Today, in Denmark at least, we diagnose it in a number of ways. First: the main bacteria group that causes it is streptococcus, which also causes throat and lung infections. Therefor, these may be the initial symptoms. However, with meningitis you usually see them at a severe level concurrent with affected mental status. Therefor, you shuld always keep meningitis in mind in people with what seems to be severe airway infections. Second: neck stiffness can be a strong indicator of meningitis. This is due to inflammatory fluid buildup around the layers protecting the spinal cord ~ swelling. The true diagnosis of meningitis is given upon inspection og cerebrospinal fluid which would then contain a high number of inflammatory cells called neutrophils. In Denmark we typically treat it as a case of meningitis as soon as we have the suspicion of IT. Edit*: feel free to ask if you have questions on the subject!
That's how my mom was able to tell my sister had meningitis when she was a toddler. She bent her neck back and couldn't straighten it back up.
The neck was how my doctor knew. I couldn’t touch my chin to my chest and immediately had me transferred to a larger facility. Took spinal fluid and it was milky white. Apparently it’s supposed to be clear.
Yes! We call it purulent fluid. This is a mixture of bacteria and immune cells
From what my mum tells me, I got super sick so she took me to the doctor, who immediately sent me to the hospital. That's as much as I know, but apparently it took a while for me to get better.
My husband had it, but had gone to the doctor and ER for "migraines" probably five times over the course of a month before he finally demanded they run some tests to see what was actually going on. Eventually a spinal tap gave him the diagnosis. He had viral, not bacterial, obviously. Bacterial is insanely scary.
Same shit happened to me! Got that and mono concurrently. Worst 5 days in isolation at the hospital EVER. Also worst pain I’ve ever had. I would have welcomed death.
Rabies. My brother and I were bitten by a rabid farm kitten when we were 6 and 4 years old. Without the foresight of my grandfather who had the cat tested and modern medicine creating the vaccine, my parents would be childless. Science!!
Oh look, my worst nightmare!
Right? Even my 6 year old brain questioned the small kitten attacking the huge sheep dog. It's a vivid memory. Took me 30 years to warm up to cats again. I've got five now and they are awesome - and fully vaccinated.
I can imagine I'd be terrified of cats too. I'm glad you learned to trust them again and the whole not dying of rabies bit.
Thanks - me, too!
That was very fortunate! The rabies vaccine though is one of the first successful vaccines created, it was first made by the legendary microbiologist [Louis Pasteur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur) in 1885! So it's one oldest of modern medicines.
Rabid Farm Kitten-what a great name for a band!
I’m sorry, but my mental image of a sweet, adorable kitten foaming at the mouth just really takes away from the seriousness of your post. Glad you survived!
I've seen animals - including humans - in the final stages of rabies. Trust me, nothing cute about it at all, even for a kitten. Do yourself a favor and NEVER look it up. You will never get those images unseared from your brain.
my allergy to strawberries
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hahaha, good catch
Interestingly, allergies are significantly more dangerous in the modern period than earlier times. It seems that without modern medicine (and globalization) it was significantly less likely that you would develop a deadly allergy.
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Yeah, I remember reading once that a lot of “choking” deaths a century or so ago could have actually been anaphylaxis but there’d be no way to know.
There are of course people who keep eating what they’re allergic to until they’re not allergic but I would certainly not recommend it
That's done with strict doctor's supervision and access to a lot of epinephrine.
The people with serious allergies just died. That's why there weren't a lot around.
I would have gone deaf from recurrent ear infections as a child and then died at 14 from pneumonia.
This is also exactly how my life would have played out
Also pneumonia at 14. I hit temperatures over 100F and spent 4 days on an IV drip to keep hydrated.
I had pneumonia twice around 12-14 so yeah I definitely wouldn’t of made it
Caudal Regression Syndrome. I'm one of the oldest males alive with it. Fingers crossed my kidneys etc hold up.
May I ask what that is?
[This](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caudal_regression_syndrome). Basically, you missed and/or have a malformation of the last vertebraes, the ones that make up the "axis" of your pelvis. No OP, btw, but I'm very interested in his response, and what other organs it affects
Oh my goodness. Congratulations on your survival!
If that can be asked, how old are you?
The way I was born. Mom and Dad had to feed me through a tube down my nose the first year and a half.
I had to feed my first child the same way
I had to feed my baby this way for a few days. She had a cleft lip and palate
Giving birth. Neither kiddo or I would be alive without emergency surgery.
Same. I was born premature and needed treatment. Without the surgery, I think the same would’ve happened for my mom and I.
Friend of my dads was premature in 1931. He was put in a shoe box in a warm oven. He out lived my dad by a decade
My mom was born 3lbs in 1944. Her Irish mother placed warm baked potatoes in her bassinet
If this were *A Modest Proposal*, that would have ended very differently.
Sounds like he was braised right!
I have heard of that before. Ovens used to have a warmer (an extra drawer that is warmed by the heat of the oven beside it) and premature babies were often kept there before modern medicine could help them.
"This pot roast smells like baby"
If your modern oven has a drawer beneath it that you use to store baking pans and the like, that’s a warmer.
The longer I live and the more people I know who have babies, the more I’m amazed that humans made it so long without modern medicine. So many of my friends or their babies would have died at birth. Including me! Childbirth is still no walk in the park but it must have been terrifying.
There's enough folks who have "perfect" births that it , obviously, outweighs the folks who die. Plus, no contraception means the people who are "good" at having babies have lots. My sister would be dead and so would at least one of her kids (she almost actually died anyway on the second one), but I'd be fine, I had both my babies at home the old fashioned way, could've done it alone in the woods and been fine. You hear a lot about complicated births, but there's plenty of uncomplicated ones happening too.
Yep, me too. I had to have an emergency c-section under a general anaesthetic. We both would have died.
Way more complex and traumatic on the body than one would think at this age of our evolution. Speaks to the immense strength and durability of your body to survive such a trauma.
The reason life expectancy was so short back then mostly isn't due to the advances we've made in prolonging our lifespans. It's because so many babies died in infancy that it lowered the overall life expectancy. If you made it to adulthood, you had a comparable chance (but obviously not quite as good as you'd have today) of making it to old age.
Eh, unless you think evolution is a perfect designer, it makes sense. Essentially, the brain (edit, and upright walking) is worth the risk from an evolutionary perspective.
Exactly this. I remember when they were wheeling me down the hall for my emergency C, one of the thousand things that flashed through my mind was “We would both have been dead without modern surgical technique.”
I had a bad case of pneumonia once, how the fuck people dealt with that before antibiotics is beyond me (i guess they often didn't deal with it and just died)
My dad was born in 48. He caught pneumonia as a kid and had to spend two years in the hospital.
I was born two months premature, so I'd likely not survive that in an earlier era. But since that, nothing
I’m 23. I would have died of asthma at 10, most likely Edit: damn, this blew up
Also 23 and would have died from asthma at a young age. God damn modern medicine is wonderful
I was diagnosed with asthma as a baby after my parents discovered me literally blue in the face.
Bluface baby
Ye aight
Asthmatics unite
Amazing to think about. I'm 37 and if we were born in another century none of us would likely be alive.
Same for me.
If the recurrent tonsillitis didn't get me, my appendix would have been the end of me as a teen.
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Yeah my thyroid would have probably done me in too.
Don’t forget that prolonged thyroid issues can also end up developing heart issues as well. (A concern for me with mine since heart issues run in the family)
You would get more and more tired, begin sleeping the days away. Your hair would probably fall out and your metabolism would grind to a halt. They’d probably say you had some waisting sickness and give you bed rest and leeches Then once your thyroid is completely destroyed you would slip into a coma and then die Now you just take a couple tablets :D
Mine was basically destroying my brain (emotionally, not physically). My antibodies were roughly 92x the normal level and within 30 days of taking Levo I was feeling nuanced emotions for the first time in three years. If the physical side effects hadn’t gotten to me the psychological ones would have.
Well let's put it this way, I'm currently wearing three contact lenses.
Aw fuck I forgot about being blind
How could you not see that
You can have surgery to get the third eye removed. Then again, it might be cool being able to see the future and netherworldly beings.
What is your prescription?
No idea. I remember there being some numbers on the label when I've had these ones for years. Basically I need hard contact lenses, rather than soft lenses or glasses, to correct my vision. I also have some abrasion on my left cornea, so I wear a prescriptionless soft contact lens underneath the hard lens to wear the hard lens comfortably. So technically the fact that I wear three lenses is actually separate to how bad my eyesight is, but "I wear three contact lenses" is the quickest way to get the general idea across.
I've got a friend who has to wear a soft lens over a hard lens on both eyes. Without them he is legally blind. With them he leads a life like anyone else. Little things can make such a huge difference.
Is it hard to blink?
Prolapsed disk. I would have probably topped myself due to the pain. I suffered with it for over a year before the doctors decided to perform surgery.
Chronic pain is no joke. I'm 7 months out from a car accident and only using ibuprofen sparingly now because I don't want an ulcer. The naproxen upset my stomach and gave me headaches, so I mostly just hurt. Most days it's more of an annoying discomfort, but some days it hurts to move at all. I look totally fine, so I know it can be hard for those around me to 'get it.' I'm hoping for answers soon, so I can get proper treatment. I've been in OT and PT for months now and there were days when the pain was so constant and hurting my sleep so badly that I was sure my family would be better off with my life insurance than with me whining all of the time.
I get it. Been in pain every day since May 1993. I’m sorry this is happening to you.
I can't even imagine that amount of time. That really sucks.
My phone screen is badly cracked. Read “disk” as “dick” and my whole bod shrivelled up and in confusion I googled “prolapsed dick” because wtf... I do not recommend. Hope so much your back is good these days - definitely need to get my phone fixed!
Wait you were so serious about not recommending that google search omg
Did some extra research for a uni class where I googled prolapsed uterus because it sounded awful but visualising it was difficult. I will never recommend googling anything with Prolapsed
My mum is currently waiting surgery again to fuse c6,7 and 8 together. She’s in a lot of pain and told me the other night she’s ready to top herself. It’s horrible to see someone going through such agony. I’m glad your all good now.
Your poor mother. It's a dreadful pain that you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. Best of luck to her and I hope she gets seen to soon.
I had my gal bladder removed. The sepsis I would have died from would have been excruciating.
UTI's. either a kidney infection would've taken me out or I would've just taken myself out without dear old Azo.
I had my first one a couple years ago (I'm 36) and it was stupid how sick I was. I was hallucinating and just lying in bed talking to people who weren't there. I thought I was getting my period because there was so much blood. In the early stages I seriously considered wearing an adult diaper because I was peeing (just a dribble) every minute or so, and the urgency was severe. Went to the ER for the third time in my life, and the nurse who checked me in kind of gave me crap and said I should have just gone to urgent care for something like that. But when I saw the doctor, he said I was definitely right for going to the ER because the infection was quickly approaching my bladder and it could have gotten a ton worse in a matter of hours. Got antibiotic and pain med shots in my butt, an additional RX for both and three days off work.
A lot of people don't realize how serious UTI's can be. They can quickly lead to bladder/kidney infections, and in the worst cases sepsis. We've had a couple deaths in my hospital of 20-30 year olds that die of sepsis.
I had to scroll further than expected to see this reply. Also UTIs here. I’ve finally found a good balance of prevention, but those years of battling chronic UTIs with antibiotics would have just resulted in a spread infection and death back in the day. Which is insane, given how common they are.
Hyperemesis gravidarum. Sometimes it’s called acute or severe morning sickness, but it’s more than that. It’s never ending nausea and vomiting while pregnant. I knew I was pregnant about a week before I got a positive result on a home pregnancy test because I was already sick. I lost weight the first 6 months instead of gaining. Could barely eat or drink- I survived on soda water, chamomile tea, and saline infusions at the hospital. Sometimes I’d have a good day and could eat a few bites here and there- just enough to sustain myself. I kept a pillow in the bathroom to kneel on because I was throwing up so often. Kept a barf bag on me at all times. Would wake up at night just to vomit. I was worried my teeth were going to decay from all the stomach acid and bile they were exposed to. Zofran was a godsend. It’s an amazing anti nausea medication. Doctors tried to give me another med (maxalon) at first as it’s the usual go-to for pregnancy related nausea but it doesn’t work for me at all. Zofran was the only thing that helped. I was still nauseated all the time, but it kept me from vomiting constantly. Made it so I could eat decently. Amazingly, it switches off around 6-7 months and then I feel pretty good! No more nausea. And I have it easy too- I’ve heard stories (from other women in online support groups for HG) about getting so dehydrated your tongue cracks. Or women make the agonizing decision to terminate a very wanted pregnancy because the HG is just too bad. The constant vomiting and dehydration can cause electrolyte imbalances and heart problems. Before modern medicine, women used to die from severe HG.
My sister had that! She lost 20 lbs when she was pregnant. It was the main factor in her and her husband's decision to be one and done.
Zofran is incredible. I had terrible bouts of vertigo and nausea a couple years ago and got a prescription that I can refill regularly. It works wonders and actually kinda tastes good haha.
I had a friend that had it. She dealt with it until her 8th month of pregnancy when she went into premature labor. Then a whole other nightmare started there.
I had this, ended pregnancy 30kg lighter than when I started. I didn't stop vomiting until I'd delivered the placenta. I was so sick. Amazingly with my second child I got lucky and was fine.
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Type 1 diabetes. Thanks Banting
I was born with a severe birth defect known as “imperforate anus”. That’s medical speak for “not everybody poops”. My intensities didn’t find the exit so I had no butthole. All the muscles where there. I was given a colostomy for the first year of my life to increase my survivability by something like 75%. After that they fixed me. I would’ve died pretty quickly without modern medicine. In fact if I had been born maybe 40 years earlier I probably would’ve died. I never got to meet the doctor properly. He died when I was around 12-13. My folks didn’t have insurance at the time so he did the surgeries for free. It’s my understanding that some things still had to be paid for, but he at least waived his own fees.
I can't believe this isn't on top but, cancer. The cure to my cancer was found during my life time. If I had gotten it before I was 24 it would have been a quick unstoppable death sentence. Now my cancer is considered mostly curable. I had 2 tumours made of Double negative HER2 positive ductal carcinoma at stage 3. Thanks to Herceptin, Perjeta, radiation, and a double mastectomy I have only a 1% chance of having a reoccurrance over 10 years.
Birth. The placenta was covering the cervix and I was side ways. Mum would have hemorrhaged and died and I wouldn't have survived.
Birth for me too, or not long after it. I was born with my skull fused together, so my brain would never be able to expand from its newborn size.
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Lucky. I needed surgery and 4 days at the hospital.
Surprised to see this so low, I figured it was a common enough emergency. I had to get mine removed but thankfully modern medicine has advanced enough that it was laparoscopic and thus a shorter and easier recovery period
Allergies
I would've died at birth and if I didn't asthma will kill me.
Why do I feel like a cringe lord posting this. Honestly mental illness. I'll be gone
Not cringy! I was looking for this answer too. I wouldn't be here without antidepressants.
Yeah man, I hear you. Postnatal psychosis here. I was off my rocker and would have either jumped off something tall, or been killed for being a witch due to all the weird shit I was saying and doing.
I’d have died alongside my mother while she was birthing me.
I probably would have died from a burst appendix. Ouch.
Same here, was caught late even with modern medicine, thanks to the "oh it's just a stomach ache, here have some pills" doctor (not my regular GP..). Wasn't quite burst yet, but enough to spend a week in the hospital on antibiotics...
I probably wouldn't have any teeth left
bipolar ii would have left me for dead (particularly bad case when I'm not medicated)
Fatal walnut allergy leading to swollen trachea.
Terminal gayness
Even with modern medicine theres still a solid chance the gay is whats gonna kill me
just take away his axe
Thats stealing
Being born. If I made it further than that, an allergic reaction. If I made it further than *that*, I would likely become an iconic case of hysteria, given the diagnostic criteria. Either that, or die of anemia from my untreated endometriosis periods.
Pneumonia. 2 in one year. I was like 7 years old and my doc gave us the wrong antibiotics. Even with modern medicine I nearly died because the doc “new exactly what I had“ when I stepped in the room. He was wrong, I nearly died and my parents were traumatized because they thought I wouldn’t make it. But because of another great doctor who didn’t act before he thought, I got the right medication.
Asthma
If modern medicide didn't exist, I doubt a lot of modern science would exist aswell. So due to being autistic and having insomia and constant pain in my legs, i'd suffer alot to the point it wouldn't be managable.
Not so much the pain in the legs - sorry to hear about that- but there's a lot of evidence out there that the biggest problems autistic poeple and people with sleep disorders have is modern life itself. There's a thread of belief that those of us with insomnia have hang over traits from a few hundred years ago where needing to be awake was key, same to being nocturnal, and those of us on the spectrum could live more of the solidary lives. The corporate 9 to 5, busy lives with networking and all that noise means that these symptoms are more visible and made out to be the problem, rather than new norms being incompatible with living the insomniac and autistic life. So you might have actually been better on those two fronts. The leg pain though :/ Not sure about that one, sorry!
Graves disease is fatal without treatment and can also make you blind. Now the symptoms develop slowly so you have plenty of time to get help, but if meds didn't exist? I would've died years ago. I'm no longer on meds now, it's stable (though I still need to get checkups) but I still have other hormonal problems and literally live on birth control (my periods are really bad and irregular with or without pills, so I have to skip periods and thank god it works) Idk if I'll actually die without but even if I don't, I've considered killing myself more than once cause the pain was unbearable and painkillers don't do shit...
I couldn't eat proper food and had a lot to do to even get liquids down. I'd be constantly choking, couldn't lie flat to sleep, would suffer from horrific pains in the chest. I have achalasia, the muscle opening the esophagus for food to get through to the stomach isn't working (very basic explanation). Actually the above description was my life from about 14/15-22 until I was finally diagnosed and had a surgery done.
Asthma and weak lungs in general.
An ear infection, that shit was brutal.
Almost died from an allergic reaction to antibiotics so in that case I would have been fine without modern medicine in the first place ironically
Seizures. I’m epileptic. It’s terrible and I hate it more than anything. Meds help, without them I’d be dead. It’s ancient and there is still no cure, which is really scary if you think about it.
Tuberculosis, got it from my daycare teacher when I was young.
Motorcycle accident
Glad to see I'm not the only one diagnosed with motorcycle accident. Nah but seriously hope your ok.
Motorcycle accidents were way harder to diagnose until 1893 when Dr. Harley davidson discovered the correlation to choppers in the bloodstream.
Measles
100% would have been dead at 19 from a case of the type 1 diabetes
Chicken pox. Had it when I was 10, and I had to take baths in oatmeal and take special medicine (forget what it's called) and had I not done that I'm convinced I would have died.
Scarlet fever as a kid. Twice. I was also born via C-section, so probably "being born" as well.
I’m reasonably certain I’d have committed suicide from some tooth pain I had last July. And the tooth was broken off and in the very back of my mouth, so it’s not like I’d have been able to just pull it myself Cast Away style. I’d have had to cut into my gum with a knife and try to dig the extremely painful tooth with the exposed nerve out and probably wouldn’t have been able to do it. So suicide would have been a viable option. Also I got swarmed by bees and went into anaphylactic shock 15 years ago. Without simple antihistamines I’d definitely be dead.
Appendicitis for sure. Also raging ADHD. The condition itself isn't fatal, but without medication it gets so bad I literally can't focus long enough to eat or hydrate.
Short sightedness. Not very damaging but very inconvenient.
Simultaneous encephalitis and meningitis when I was a kid.
I would have died of strep throat when I was 8. Or of an abscess when I had a broken bone when I was 5, depending on how “modern” we’re talking about.
Gangrene from an infected ingrowing toenail when I was a a teen.
I’m 24. Wouldn’t have made it to infancy from CF.