Would you still be alive ?

[Pheno]

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

[smudwhisk]

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.

[Kay99]

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

[angelfish58]

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.

[louisa maud]

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

[smudwhisk]

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.

[LizzieW]

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.

[Treetotal]

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

 

[littlesis 76]

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 !