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I've been lucky enough that I've never yet had an illness that I wouldn't have survived without an antibiotic, nor have I had anything that required surgery or any other real medical intervention. But I'll bet there are some folks here who wouldn't be around if they'd live a hundred years ago. So...what is it that would have done you in?
Oh yeah.
I've had fairly high-tech surgery 6 times. I would certainly be dead 200 years ago, and likely a useless lump 75 years ago.
I am exceedingly fortunate to live now and to have had the care I did.
Well, there's so many things I can't really be sure about, you know?
Who knows how well I would have dealt with measles, or diphtheria, or polio? Who knows how bad one of those 90 kajillion strep infections I used to get could have been without antibiotics?
I agree with Orual, there's no way to know what I might have had...my stepdad had polio and came away with minor damage, but that was a horrible disease that I'm very thankful I don't have to worry about. My grandmother said that growing up, most people knew a family who had lost a child to one of the common illnesses for which we vaccinate.
But more directly. I almost died at birth, and it's only through an emergency c-section and aggressive resuscitation that I'm alive at all. I've had a few kidney infections, one quite bad, and those could have resulted in death from renal failure. I'm also thankful that psych meds are around.
I'll be a nurse in about two months, and while I definitely don't agree that Western medicine is always actually helpful, I've seen some amazing things that keep people alive.
I was thinking more of actual medical problems that were cured or solved through medicine...I hadn't even thought of vaccines! They are clearly one of the biggest reasons we are all alive and kicking (too bad not everyone appreciates them).
I had a severe UTI as an infant and was in the hospital for a little while. Obviously, I don't remember it, but my mother has told me it was a close call. I don't know, would they even have known what was wrong with me 100 years ago?
I'd probably have to count every time I've been on antibiotics, even if that particular disease itself might not have proved fatal. There's just no telling if I would have survived unscathed or not, since almost anything we prescribe antibiotics for now could potentially be lethal. Treating broken or infected teeth is a big one, too. We don't often think of dentistry as something saving lives, but an infection in your jaw can quite easily and quickly get into your brain and kill you.
I'd also count when I broke my wrist as a kid. There's simply no telling how that could have gone without modern medical treatment and people have died from less. If I didn't directly die from it, I might have ended up without proper use of my right hand which could have made life very difficult and certainly left me vulnerable to further injuries without being able to rely fully on one arm.
And of course, that which does not kill us may just leave us too weak to fight off the next bug.
I probably just felt like dying. Immodium AD has saved me more than once.
And your heart. There's a strong link between poor dental health and myocardial infarction.Quote:
Originally posted by Zuul
All of which makes sense: a mouth in bad shape has lots of breaks in the oral mucosa, right into the bloodstream, and we put tons of bacteria in our mouths, every day.
Leaving aside vaccines, and better sanitation, etc., yes, my life was literally saved and at almost the last possible second by a clever surgeon who dealt with an ectopic pregnancy. I can still feel the life pouring out of me and his cool Chinese eyes looking at me over the surgical mask. I have a nightmare about it every once in a while, and that was, um, 35 years ago.
Have you ever had pneumonia? Treated these days with a simple course of antibiotics.
My father was born in 1935, and at one year of age, he got pneumonia, which progressed until his lungs flooded. In order to let him keep breathing, they had to resect his ribs, to allow a drain to be put into his lungs. The surgeon that did the work, by chance, was doing school physicals a few years later, when my dad started school. He hadn't recognized my dad until he got to see the scar on his back from the rib resection. At which point he said something to to the effect of: You're that kid! I never expected you would live!
That's what pneumonia without antibiotics was like.
I'd picked up pneumonia as a child, and survived it thinking it was nothing.
I had pneumonia 7 times before I was ten years old.
I'm going to go with yes.