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General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: littlesis 76 on Tuesday 30 January 18 12:55 GMT (UK)
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After spending many years researching my ancestors I am sad to say I am very used to a death of a young one,others around me who know nothing of their family history are always shocked
I always say have a look at your own history and would you be alive if born 100 or 200 years ago ?
I would of died when having my 1st child aged 27 and my son would of also not lived having developed pre-eclampsia in birth
Had I not of died then, I would of died in my 2nd pregnancy aged 35 as I developed type 1 diabetes at 8 wks
All of that is without the illnesses and broken arm doing childhood
Thank God for the medicine and treatments of today
So would you of had a early death had you lived in the past ?
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Interesting question! I think I would have survived childhood, not having needed medical attention then. Although without vaccination you wouldn't know. I doubt I'd have survived my teens though with various bouts of bronchitis and I had my appendix out when I was 16. So I think 16 max.
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No I would be long gone likely died when I had my son aged 20 yrs old as I developed a blood clot in my leg and to be honest it was touch and go even then, my husband was told after 3 weeks he could take his son home but I only had a 50/50 chance
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Pyloric stenosis would have seen me gone at 3wks.
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Interesting thread and very thought provoking....
I may still be alive, although I did have a DVT aged 22 (the contraceptive pill possibly contributed to this). I had another DVT aged 26 (possible cause due to flight and previous history). I had Mumps as a child also German Measles and chicken pox.....
My children wouldn't be...They both have Cystic Fibrosis, and 100 yrs ago it was unknown about....
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My mother had rumatic fever as a teenager and was not able to walk for a period of time. If this was earlier before treatment was available then none of her decendent would be here.
I have not found any other major illnesses in my tree to date.
Regards panda
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I am a twin; born prematurely (as most twins are) and spent time in a Special Care Baby Unit.
30 years previously my mother was also born as a twin - but no SCBU where she was.
So, depending on what time in history, I may not have survived infancy?
These days I have Type 2 Diabetes - which may have done for me?
I also have BPH (an enlarged prostate), and had a catheter for 8 months last year.
Without modern medical progress, I would almost certainly not have lived into my 60's. :-\
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I'd very probably have been alive, fortunately, but being very shortsighted would have had problems in everyday life - on the plus side, very good close up vision, so I might have made a decent jeweller, lacemaker or seamstress. That is, of course, unless I'd been run over by a cart, crossing the road ..... so I might not be alive, after all!
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Good afternoon,
Iv'e never had an illness of any sort apart from the usual childhood things measles, chicken pox etc. So would most likely have lived.
I suppose the the only thing that may have killed me was the army. Having left school at 15 1/2 I would have been much more likely to have gone to war a 120 years previously. As both constituent parts of my regt were in the charge of the light brigade I may have taken part in that.
John915
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Well my mum was born 95 years ago and is still alive and kicking despite a poverty struck childhood, cerebral meningitis at 21, being knocked down by a tram during the war in the blackout and surviving a triple heart bypass so I think she (and hopefully me) are made of sturdy stuff!
Seems odd to me that she almost fits your category of being born 100 years ago so maybe things weren't so dire then as we think.
Pheno
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I had a ruptured appendix when I was 11. Surgeon said it was one of the worst he'd ever seen. My mother knew something wasn't right so phoned the doctor otherwise I may not have survived to the next day anyway.
I've had the auto-immune condition rheumatoid arthritis for the last 7.5 years. While not life threatening in itself, although it can cause damage to internal organs when left untreated which can be, without recent modern medicine I'd have been more severely affected than I have been and the last few years have been difficult with trying different treatments so am thankful unlike some of previous generations that I was born later.
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Without asthma medication I doubt I would have survived past 10 :-\ However other than short sight that seems to be it!!
I have already outlived my parents and all but one grandparent who died in her early 70's. We aren't a long lived family !!
Kay
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Possibly not, the usual childhood illnesses, measles, scarlet fever etc could've seen me off. My first baby when I was 24 was breech so that might have been the end for both of us, but I'm lucky to be here at all as my mum had diptheria when she was 6, my dad's sister died from the same disease at the same age.
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I am one of a twin, my brother being born 2.5 hours after me and the next day, he was fine, I wasn't expected to live at birth but here I am alive and kicking, get my pension and my bus pass so I feel incredibly lucky
Louisa Maud
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My grandmother had diphtheria as a child in about 1920, she survived to be 96.
My mother and her two brothers have all outlived their father who had a third fatal heartattack when he was 70. One of their uncles died of a heartattack in his forties and another had a triple bypass in his early 80s and went on to be 97. One of Mum's brothers had a heartattack in his 60s and so far not another (although he seems to be doing his best to try and have another they way he gets worked up over everything) and Mum had a quadruple bypass the other year even though she never had any real symptoms of heart problems. Their other brother has so far not had any issues. Just hoping I've not inherited that from that side of the family as the rheumatoid arthritis is believed to have come from that side. :-\
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Well, my childhood was OK, got the usual childhood ailments, chicken pox, mumps, measles etc. then as an adult things started going wrong. I got asthma aged about 17/18 - although at the time it was called bronchitis so I lived with it until I was in my 40s when I got a proper diagnosis and have used inhalers ever since. On the other hand my 2 x g.grandfather died of asthma, in his 60s, he was a poulterer so whether the dust of chicken etc. got to him I don't know. My 3 x g.gran also died of asthma, but it was combined with senile decay!
Would I have survived gallstones? My gran had them sometime in the 1920s and had an operation, as did my mum in the 1940s and two cousins in the 1950s before me in the 1980s. Other ancestors in the early 1900s didn't survive them as they caused other problems leading to their deaths.
Would I have survived a large, fortunately, benign tumour in my uterus which grew so quickly that after about 8 weeks it was the size of a melon and stopped me eating properly, without an op I wouldn't have been able to eat.
Would I have survived bowel cancer if I hadn't had repeated colonoscopies which removed the pre-cancerous growths before they became cancerous - I doubt it in the 1800s/early to mid 1900s. My uncle didn't survive it and he died in 1975, but then nor did my cousin who died in 2012 but my dad did who didn't get it until he was in his 80s and had a major op but was out of hospital within 5 days, fit as a fiddle.
I haven't had TB like my maternal grandfather and a maternal aunt died from in the 1920s, I haven't had uterine cancer like my one of my paternal g.grans died from in 1901.
Where I have got lucky, and I don't know how, is that many of my ancestors on both sides of my tree died of heart disease/coronary disease/hypertension etc. yet I have low blood pressure and having just had all the heart tests possible, apparently my heart is working exceptionally well for someone of my age (77). Both my parents lived into their 90s even though their parents didn't (both their fathers died young, my mum's dad from TB, my dad's dad in a motorcycle accident) but my maternal gran died from a stroke and my paternal gran from pancreatic cancer. Today, I guess my maternal gran's hypertension would have been under proper control so she may have had a much longer life, unfortunately, pancreatic cancer is no more curable now than it was in the 1950s when my paternal gran died.
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I wonder if I would have survived Double Pneumonia at 18 months which also picked up a Heart Murmur which I outgrew without intervention by the age of 11 years.
Carol
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Hearing all your stories does make you realise how lucky we are .
Not one member of my own immediate family would of lived past 35 years if we were born 150 years ago.
Makes you realise with their diet and the sanitation without all the ailments and diseases we still get today that so many lived as long as they did !
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We have a lot to be thankful for
Louisa Maud
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If double Pneumonia at aged four didn't kill me, or Polio at five, both before the benefit of the NHS. I certainly would not have survived a ruptured ectopic pregnancy at 37. Even with modern medical intervention my husband was told I had no hope of survival and to say goodbye, trust my stubbornness to prove them wrong.
We sometimes forget how fortunate we are today :)
Jebber
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I would not be-an undiagnosed heart attack which the Dr said was indigestion and a chest infection went for four days with me feeling worse and worse ( well you would wouldn`t you).
Fortunately a leaflet about swine flu came ih the post, I had a good many of the symptoms so phone the helpline.They said I needed a chest XRay ASAP.
Ambulance arrived and in to A&E;I had had "A significant heart event"----
Lots of damage so no by-pass or stent possible,BUT I am not too bad at all . I had such wonderful treatment and aftercare and I am most grateful.
I can compare my treatment with what my Mum had in 1957. Nothing really. At home and a few pills.She deteriorated and I insisted she went to hospital when the Dr called after about four days.
She died the next day aged 61.She had Rheumatic fever as a child and that damages the heart.
We moan about the N.H but those of us old enough to remember when you had to pay the Dr, and for any medication and if you hadn`t the money - it was grandma`s remedies, so we are very appreciative of the N.H.S .
I can tell you if you had sore throats as often as I did and the remedy was grand dad`s sweaty
socks wrapped round your neck----!
Viktoria.
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Great thread ...I would have died in a stupid accident aged 19 if french para medics hadnt got to hospital on time .
Mind you 100 years ago maybe i wouldn't have attempted my daring exploit.
Luckily my health insurance covered cost of intensive care and 3 weel stay otherwise parents would have had to mortgage the house.
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Then again, despite no NHS, poor sanitary conditions and poor lifestyles I still had quite a few ancestors who lived into their late 80s.
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After spending many years researching my ancestors I am sad to say I am very used to a death of a young one,others around me who know nothing of their family history are always shocked
I always say have a look at your own history and would you be alive if born 100 or 200 years ago ?
I would of died when having my 1st child aged 27 and my son would of also not lived having developed pre-eclampsia in birth
Had I not of died then, I would of died in my 2nd pregnancy aged 35 as I developed type 1 diabetes at 8 wks
All of that is without the illnesses and broken arm doing childhood
Thank God for the medicine and treatments of today
So would you of had a early death had you lived in the past ?
Yep, I wouldn't be here today! When I was born, I was haemorrhaging badly, as was my Mum. If it wasn't for my Dad, who provided his blood for transfusions to both my Mum and myself thanks to these two men - "Highlights of Transfusion Medicine History. 1628 English physician William Harvey discovers the circulation of blood. ... 1818 James Blundell, a British obstetrician, performs the first successful transfusion of human blood to a patient for the treatment of postpartum haemorrhage.
Also, a friend of my grandparents, Walter Nash, who was at the time (1945), the Minister of Finance in our Goverment! Vitamin K, the blood coagulant, was still currently only experimental and was still being researched and not yet passed for use, but he was able to get permission for it to be used on my Mum and myself to save both of us! We were the first people in NZ to get this vital product by transfusion. This man went on to be Prime Minister in the Labour Goverment! (I'm guessing that's why my family were staunch Labour Party supporters ;D ;D). So here I am, 72 years on, alive and well!! I understand that Vitamin K is now given to all new born babies in NZ!
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I have been very lucky to have had no major illnesses or accidents during my life so far. I was admitted to hospital with severe chest pains about two years ago & the paramedic expressed surprise that I hadn't visited my GP for the last 3 years and was on no regular medication at my age (I'm only in my early fifties!) Both my children were born quickly, with no pain relief or complications, although I was kept in with a suspected part retained placenta after my daughter's birth; according to the nurses everyone who was anyone had taken a look at my unusually small placenta :) My grandfather recovered from rheumatic fever in the early thirties and survived thirteen heart attacks in later life, sadly the fourteenth eventually finished him. I do seem to have come from a stock of folk who lived very long and active lives on both sides, as does my husband. I do hope that whatever brings my end it is swift and not burdensome to my relatives :)
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In a word. No.
I have survived thyroid cancer and had radiation therapy for that. I have AF and have had a pacemaker for more than ten years. My grandmother died in 1933 with AF and dropsy. Both controlled now with medication or pacemaker. She was also asthmatic, now also controlled. Grandfather died in 1918 from TB.
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Transcribing burial registers reinforces human mortality as well as tenacity.
I think it is nice seeing children given the name of a deceased sibling because it honours that child and the earlier generation namesake.
What I noticed with my financially secure rural leaseholder folks was that most survived into old age so they must have missed the accidents doing farm work and blacksmithing and milling and weaving. They must have had healthy food and clean living.
But if women become widows early and the children lose the connection to the land because they don’t get to keep their father’s prosperity, that is often when lives are cut short- poverty, workplace accidents and disease. My impoverished 1850’s city dewellers died younger than their grandparents on the farm 100 years before.
I grew up on a farm -
Pigs and cows can pass diseases to dairy workers, killers
stepped on rusty metal and got blood poisoning, a killer
Measles, mumps, killers
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Well my mum was born 95 years ago and is still alive and kicking despite a poverty struck childhood, cerebral meningitis at 21, being knocked down by a tram during the war in the blackout and surviving a triple heart bypass so I think she (and hopefully me) are made of sturdy stuff!
Seems odd to me that she almost fits your category of being born 100 years ago so maybe things weren't so dire then as we think.
Don't you think that having a triple heart bypass may have a teeny bit to do with her surviving to 95? You make it sound like a negative factor. ;)
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I would have died from appendicitis/peritonitis at age 2½ as I nearly did anyway!
Then I had bad doses of croup, measles and bronchitis!
I would never have seen adulthood
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I don't think I would. I have a pelvic malformation which means it closes over instead of opening up when giving birth. I ruptured and bled out when having my first daughter and required an emergency section. in fact one of my 3x grt aunts died of it (and her baby)
That is If I'd ever managed to be born safely as my mum was an elderly prima gravida. Or survived pyelo-nephritis without having the option of antibiotics.
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Many of my rural ancestors lived to a good age, and there were few infant deaths, but I needed an emergency caesarean with my first child, so neither of us would probably have survived that in earlier times.
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I don't think I would be.
I have a rare auto-immune problem which requires permanent medication and back in history would probably not even have been diagnosed.
Bev
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I'd probably have been one of the many women who died in childbirth, when my first daughter got stuck, not breach but facing the wrong way nonetheless!
And I have a five year old grandson, born fifteen weeks too soon, who is currently obsessed with volcanos, paper aeroplanes and tornados. Without a very good, modern NICU in Burnley, he wouldn't be here.
My not quite two year old great-niece, now rushing around like a mad thing was, just last year, the smallest baby ever to have had a particular procedure, by a brilliant and very daring surgeon, to correct a very severe congenital heart defect. We don't have to go back more than a very few years for her not to have survived infancy.
But I also have ancestors who lived very long lives in pretty basic circumstances, my best example being a several times great-grandmother who was born in 1746, in the Yorkshire Dales and who had the good grace to live until after the 1841 census so that I could know about her!
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I had a heart attack at 25 and cancer at 30 so I would probably be a gonna.
My Wife had pre-eclampsia and was very close to death. So she'd be a gonna and my daughter was born 10 weeks early weighing 1lb so defiantly a gonna.
So huge thank you to the NHS and modern times
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I think I would still be alive, age 60, but I would be in a lot of discomfort if I hadn't had a hemorrhoidectomy and several years later had my gallbladder removed. Also, being very short-sighted I'm very pleased to have contact lenses.
Martin
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"would you be alive if born 100 or 200 years ago ?"
If I was still living, I would be a fair age now ;D ;D ;D
Malky
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;D ;D ;D ;D
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This is an interesting topic. I had bronchitis many times as a child, beginning when I was just a few months old so that may have finished me off quickly especially if I had lived in poor, damp conditions like some of my city-dwelling ancestors probably did. I got all the usual childhood diseases (severely) so may not have survived all of those. Also as someone else has mentioned, being short-sighted would have made life rather dangerous. I often think too how people dealt with pain before pain-killers became available. I know there were various plant remedies but not everyone would have access to them.
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unless we were rich and/or titled many things that afflict us now would have been unlikely a century or so back - high cholesterol and its knock-on effects, obesity, anything associated with a sedentary lifestyle. We may not have lived long enough to get what we now regard as diseases of old age such as dementia, arthritis, various cancers - we'd have been worn out at 50. And accidents would have been of a different nature - farm machinery rather than motor vehicles for instance.
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I would just be another name on a headstone for sure!
First heart attack at 38 years old and followed by a triple by pass later.
4 heart stents later together with a defibrillator before I reached the age of 70 years.
Regards Brian [coffin dodger]
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The lower life expectancy was largely due to the abominably high rate of infant and child mortality during previous times. If you made it to 10 then you had a good chance of living to age 50 and above.
There is a Roman memorial panel to a former gladiator whose age was shown as C (100), but then he was considerably more of an exception than now.
The shorter life expectancy does account for the much earlier average of marriage in previous times, people in their early teens marrying, of course there wasn't a lot of point delaying marriage till 30 if life expectancy was 26 or so!
Authority finally caught up in 1929 in Britain when the legal age of marriage was raised to 16 for both sexes, from 12 (girl) and 14 (boy)
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Possibly - and some of the reasons given above yes your chance of dying was higher but not always - there have been cases of premature babies surviving years ago - although most didn't and thankfully the balance has swung the other way and many do survive with support. And the needing a caeserean thing a lot of emergency sections done these days may not have resulted in the woman's death (although the morbidity levels were certainly higher)
Personally - I needed a corneal graft when I was 7 - but that wouldn't have killed me, but would have impacted my life
I had a small haemorrage after my third but I don't think it would have killed me
However did then develop pancytopenia due to pernicious anaemia which even these days has a 50% mortality rate (it just doesn't usually get to the level I was at), so that would have killed me
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I'd have passed on aged 11 as that's when I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. Needing insulin daily since then.
It was 100% a death sentence prior to the invention of inject-able insulin, known as 'sugar sickness' at some point in history.
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Diabetes was known as sugar well into the 1960s. My father developed it in 1957. As he was an engine driver this should have ended his career. However, after 3 months off sick ( no sick pay!!) he was passed fit for local yard work, and from May 1958 resumed duty as a mainline express driver, the only restriction being he was not allowed to drive single manned diesel railcars. The first ever to resume full duties.