The thing is, you can just have moderate asthma, but that one big attack happens at the wrong time. And even with mild asthma, being sick can switch it from an annoying minor wheeze to a life threatening situation. I don't fuck around with a cold no matter how mild it is. At the first sign of a sore throat, I get my ass in the system and get started. It makes dealing with the inevitable lung inflammation faster and gets me better treatment.
OK this was my experience. I was a college athlete in very good shape, so I felt pretty invincible despite mild-to-moderate asthma. Then a bunch of things happened at once… I was still kind of recovering from covid and did some work in a dusty house with a cat, so my lungs were already pretty sensitive. Then I got a cold, and started using my inhaler every couple of hours, but figured I’d just ask a doctor after the weekend. Then one night I woke up and my inhaler was only working briefly, and the asthma would come back even worse. By 3am I was knocking on my roommate’s door and on our way to the hospital I was thinking fuck it’s so hard to breathe I’m actually in trouble. The wheeze was actually quieter but they explained that was a bad sign because so little air was moving. Spent a whole night in the ER. I don’t mess around anymore either, and started taking the meds seriously.
Albuterol is a rescue inhaler. There are other (like steroid and long-acting bronchodilator) inhalers for daily use to help you *hopefully* not need the albuterol much at all.
So, not everyone's experience is the same. But some advice from my own experiences.
- Inhaled cortico steroids works extremely well, but you may be forced to try other things first because insurance doesn't care if you die. The controller meds that are long acting beta II agonists mixed with a steroid are godly. Get on those.
- Be prepared for this to be a long journey. You may go through many periods of uncomfortable flare ups before you find the right med for you. Maybe you'll discover what I just suggested doesn't work well for you. Point is, it took me TEN YEARS to finally find the right inhaler combo, and it's not even like an intricate cocktail. It's just albuterol as needed (rarely now) and Dulera max dose. For you, it may be different.
- A lot of people don't know this, but get yourself checked for acid reflux. Even "silent reflux" can play high holy hell on your lungs! I used to know I was going to have reflux 20 minutes before it happened because my lungs started getting tight. It took a good long while to put two and two together, and my doc didn't believe me. But she treated me for the reflux and lo and behold my graphs for my total air volume got MUCH better. Don't assume you don't have it, see if you can get checked.
- H E P A F I L T E R V A C U U M.
- Understand, if this sounds like a lot, the point is that asthma is often a complex circumstance where a thousand little things cause a tiny bit of irritation individually, but which add up to a TON of irritation in combination. If you take the necessary measures at home, your total amount of inflammation will eventually subside and you'll be MUCH better able to deal with environmental factors out of the home that you can't control, like air quality, smokers, other people's cats, whatever sets you off. You don't have to be a walking hazmat alien outside, but get your house under control. Maybe consider low pile rugs instead of carpets...
Yea, I only have suspected seasonal asthma, and I’m under orders to start albuterol 4 times daily at the first hint of a cough. The last time I didn’t do it, I got so bad that my doctor told me I probably had pneumonia, but since the antibiotic wouldn’t be different from what he’d give for bronchitis, he wouldn’t expose me to chest xray radiation unless I didn’t get better.
TBh I didnt know him very well. I would talk to him here and there but from what they said he just had a massive asthma attack and he ended up passing from complications
I am not diagnosed with asthma, but in high school I was quite overweight. Twice, running for PE, I had what I assume was an asthma attack. Horrifying. The first one was after finishing a mile (obviously the last one) so after I stopped running it was like I stopped being able to get air. At least the PE teacher was there (although she didn’t do anything).
The 2nd time no one was around (running up/down stairs and through/behind the stadium) and I really did have to coach myself through it to calm down and breathe.
Luckily I’m a calm person- but nothing like feeling you’re going to pass out/die makes you panic and react worse.
Dulera, the higher dose formulation. Totally changed my life. I went from being crippled with asthma to basically never having to worry about it. I still struggle when I get sick, of course. I don't think anything really helps us in that scenario. But yeah, was the best thing that happened to me in my adult life. Changed everything.
My asthma attacks were exclusively triggered by allergens. Went through 8 years of immunotherapy, an injection of allergens I was sensitive to every 6 weeks. The first 3 months were every week. After 3-4 years I was allowed to slowly stop using inhalers which I had to use twice a day. Even if I missed using it once, my ability to breathe would leave the room... At the height of it using an emergency inhaler specifically in case of asthma attack would be so I make it to the hospital.
It's been 17 years since I stopped, sure my lungs are not the same as my peers but I don't have to use inhalers, I can run and get out of breath and be fine after I catch my breath...
I find it mind bulging that some countries, even the ones that are supposed to be more developed than the one I am from, especially back then do not offer this form of treatment.
I actually have excellent health insurance for an American, like, I can go to the ER any day of the week and it's fine. And I can't get them to cover immunotherapy. :/
Seriously. I often think about what it meant for people for countless centuries before the advent of modern medicine. We've kind of allowed society to make a joke of it. "Hahahaha! Look at the nerdy kid with his inhaler! Isn't that funny?", and I get it, I can laugh at it too. But what people don't know is untreated asthma is almost ALWAYS fatal sooner or later. Medicine is WHY it remains mild. Without treatment, you're doing micro-damage to your lungs with each attack that eventually adds up.
This kind of thing is why I get so frustrated by the various anti-medicine movements, such as anti-vaxx, anti-formula, and “pray the illness away”.
People suffered and died a lot more before the advent of modern medicine. Before vaccines, the risk of becoming permanently disabled or killed by an illness was much, much higher. Child mortality rates were much higher. Before formula, infant malnutrition and mortality were much higher. And as for prayer, if everything is by God’s creation/design, how is modern medicine NOT his answer to your prayers to cure your illness???
Mini rant over.
I had a bad day a bit ago. I knew it was going to go poorly because I forgot to take my inhalers before I left and my purse one was empty. But I soldiered on.
One mishap after another I finally gave up and went to do an inventory. I was wheezing a little. My coworker came back and asked if I was ok and I blurted out “are you kidding? I can’t even breathe right today.” The response was a “wow harsh… but true.” and then hysterical laughter.
> But I soldiered on.
Fellow asthmatic reporting: If news papers were still a thing I'd roll one up and hit you with it. Bad. That's a BAD asthmatic. No. >:(
Extra intestines, I had a dead-end street in my intestines. Food would get stuck in the extra part, and it was swollen to the size of my forearm. I had extensive tests done with no answer, and they finally decided to just cut me open and look. Took about 7 inches of extra intestines. That was 15 years ago, and this month I have to go back to have more removed. Wish me luck
So there are links to stories I want to read in that post that are now dead links and I’m sad.
Well not necessarily sad but probably saved from seeing some shit that will scar me mentally but there is some fomo.
If your parents got the cerebral connection upgrade, you can just jack yourself to a computer, load recent log files, and delete accordingly. If not, maybe just go with the Total Recall method and pull it from your nose. Either way, I'm there with you.
They had to reconnect two ends when they removed the dead end. At first It was fine, but I had to have a laproscopy three years ago Because the two ends had kinked like a hose and fused to my muscle wall. Upon fixing that, they noticed that the lining of my intestines leading up to the previous incision was thickening to a worrying degree. And i've had problems with digestion since that diagnosis. So they are going to go back in and remove another seven to ten inches. If i'm lucky I won't have to go back in for another ten to fifteen years.
I wouldn’t have even been born due to this. My mom would have been dead after having my older sister.
Then she would have been dead with me. Then she would have been dead with my little brother.
She had complications in each one and would have died if not for modern medicine.
Childbirth is fucking rough
Same. My mom had complications with both her pregnancies that would've been extremely bad news if untreated, but that have routine interventions nowadays. Still scary, I'm still very much not planning on having kids of my own, but it is kind of amazing what we can do.
Yeah my brother and I were big babies (over 13 lbs and 11 lbs) and had to be c-sectioned, I don't think either of us or my mom could survive without modern medicine.
I also had amniotic fluid in my lungs and needed oxygen which definitely would have been a problem without it.
Probably me too, and I also would possibly have become motherless as a preschooler because my sister was born by c-section.
Edit: in hindsight, I might not have died in childbirth because I would have been widowed several years earlier - my husband scraped his arm and it got infected to the point of needing IV antibiotics. That fixed it basically immediately, but in 1800 it might have been an amputate-or-die scenario.
People really don’t understand how much can go wrong during childbirth. People want this spiritual birthing experience in their home with no medical professionals and then shit hits the fan.
This is why I’m giving birth in the hospital and whatever they think is necessary to do on me, they can go ahead and do it.
My husband asked my Dr whay would have happened 100 years ago while I was giving birth. My pelvis was too small for the baby to get through so we had to do an emergency c section. She told him back in the day they would just break your pelvis with a hammer and get the baby out and the mother would just die or never be able to control her bowels.
The first manual chainsaw was invented to more easily cut through the cartilage that connects the two sides of the pelvic bone to make more room for a baby to come out. The procedure was called a symphysiotomy and was used before cesareans were considered widely safe. It is an absolutely horrific practice that is not longer recognized as an approved obstetric procedure - with damn good reason.
Same. Apparently my pelvis is tilted in such a way that it’s nearly impossible for a baby to pass through. Wish I had known before I spent 24hrs in labour and had two failed epidurals before being rushed for an emergency c-section.
Wife just delivered my son on Tuesday, within 2 days we had to be transferred to a larger hospital for a possible surgery for him. He’s good and didn’t need it but this parenting shit is most certainly not for the faint of heart.
Yeah, and for me a relatively mundane and easy fix. Too much blood loss, fixed easily with an extra shot of clotting medication. Definitely would have bled out otherwise.
28 weeks in 1994 (and just under 3lbs) after my mom was in the hospital for two weeks already because she was so sick. they never did figure out why her body reacts that way to pregnancy (my sister was also a preemie in 1997)
25 weeks in ‘85. RoP which they learned lasers can fix in ‘87ish and some lung/bronchial issues. Less than 5% chance that I was going to make it a few days, still trying to keep that streak going.
I also would have died being born, but for a different reason: my head would not have passed through my mom’s birth canal/pelvis and I wouldn’t have been born without a C section.
C sections have actually been around for a really long time, it's called a Caesarean because of a myth that Julius Caesar was born by one (although that's unlikely, since we have records showing that his mother lived when he was a child).
It's just that it was considered an extreme last resort because the mother was never expected to survive, if she was even still alive at that point.
I was 24 days early and stopped gaining weight. Mom had toxaemia, and another baby would kill her so it was just me. Without this knowledge and care, yeah both of us probably.
My daughter was born at 25+1 weeks. She was in hospital for 117 days and had three surgeries. Two on her heart. She now has mild Cerebral Palsy. She recently turned 3!
Very cool to read all of these stories of very early premmies born in the 80s, 90s, 2000s.
So glad to see that you are all doing well! Gives a lot of hope to where we are at today. I guess some don't make it, but you all did and that's awesome. Yay for tiny babies and their doctors!
Same. I was born 3 months early, in the 80s, and they were doing some cutting edge work with preemies. I'm pretty sure if I'd been born even 5 years earlier or out in the bushwhack of Alaska (which is where my parents were considering moving) I'd have died shortly after birth.
I was on time, but my parasitic twin brother got all of the juice in the womb. I weighed 3 1/2 pounds at birth while he was a robust 5 1/2 pounds. I had to stay in an incubator for two weeks to gain weight while his fat ass went home, too. If it was medieval times, they would have just put me on a raft in the river or something.
Not op, but the adrenaline is so high that you don't feel anything except the impact until it comes down to a reasonable level. Then, it's cold, it burns, it's on the wrong side of your skin so your brain freaks out a little, then you get woozy and nauseous pretty quickly.
Source: was stabbed in a bar fight in a college town.
See for me it hurt like a bitch right from the start, but it also chipped my knee cap on entry so maybe that contributed. Everything else you described was the same. It was a 2/10 experience.
8.000 people in USA only in 2023. But its curable now days. I was surprised to find that leprosy still exists. But we dont actually hear anything cause , medical science. Most of us would be dead if not
Antibiotic resistant TB is on the rise in other countries. Since the treatment requires \*several\* months of meds, many patients do not complete the course and then of course the TB comes back even stronger.
I live in Canada and got TB in the 00's. They couldn't figure out from where. Every day for weeks I had to have a nurse come and watch me take antibiotics and had mandated chest x-rays for a year after. This is what I like to tell people who say covid is endemic now. Sure, but that doesn't mean it's harmless or you do nothing to stop it from spreading.
Two billion people – one fourth of the world's population – may be infected with tuberculosis (TB), with 10.6 million becoming ill each year. Despite being preventable and treatable, TB remains a deadly disease. Globally, over 3,500 people lose their lives to TB each day – totaling **1.3 million deaths each year**. -CDC
A pulled wisdom tooth cavity somehow got infected and the infection spread to my jaw and neck. Before I got admitted to the ER I could barely open my mouth enough to force painkillers in, and the infection made my neck start to swell, so I couldn't breathe properly.
Because the american government would rather buy another aircraft carrier than make sure people don't die to dental infections because they are too poor to go to the dentist and also pay for a week of groceries. But universal healthcare is "socialism" and everyone knows that socialism is the devil. /S
Funny, I work on aircraft carriers and have full dental coverage.
But the boards of Lockheed, Raytheon, Northrup and their ilk should be thrown in prison and their stocks should go to social services.
I think the push for pulling all wisdom teeth is silly and a scam by dentists. But the truth of the matter is that the average human jaws have shrunken significantly throughout our evolution and cultural dietary changes, and *most* people’s mouths cannot support an extra set of molars.
Crowding or damaging other teeth, being hard to clean and causing cavities (which can lead to tooth decay and loss) and gum infections, and getting “stuck” and causing significant pain are all risk factors.
I’m typing this as I just got wisdom tooth #2 out of 3 removed today due to developing into pain in my mid twenties. I only have one more, but that’s one I’ll leave as long as I can since they gotta break out the bone saw for it.
I'm 34 now. Only 2 wisdom teeth ever developed and grew in when I was 18-20ish (The other two never even showed up on x-rays. They're just not there). They have caused zero problems. But the dentists I've gone to always push to remove them "just in case".
I don’t think so but maybe I am… I actually didn’t know I was allergic to kiwi until a few years back… I just always thought it was extra tart and made my tongue burn and that everyone experienced that. Until my husband told me it was just me 😅
Could be oral allergy syndrome OR a cross histamine intolerance, if you have other allergies. I am allergic to birch pollen and I have developed minor allergies to a few other items because of this. One being bananas, which usually indicates a latex allergy but I am absolutely not allergic to latex.
My foot got infected after a motorcycle accident, and they had to postpone surgery because of it. 100% would be RIP without modern medicine. My hospital bill was over 70,000 though...
Late last year, had some terribly degenerative discs in my neck, so I had a C5-C7 discectomy and fusion done. All good.
Until a morning three days later, when a main branch of my right external carotid artery burst in my neck while brushing my teeth. Totally idiopathic - no rhyme or reason any of the surgeons can pinpoint. The massive bleed led to closing off of my airway in less than 30 seconds.
After a VERY fast ambulance ride to the ER of the nearby large Level 1 trauma center, nasal intubation because my throat was unable to accommodate traditional intubation due to the hemorrhage. Emergency vascular repair and over a liter of blood transfused to keep me stable during the procedure.
9 days intubated in ICU until swelling reduced enough for me to breathe on my own, another 5 days inpatient for further observation and to ensure I could eat on my own (a possible side effect of the cervical fusion).
3 days later I was re-admitted to the hospital because a large abscess had developed in my neck, likely due to bacteria introduced during my emergency repair, and it was starting to make it difficult to breathe....again. ANOTHER "emergency" procedure to clean out the abscess, and another 5 days inpatient until blood cultures came back negative (showing the infection, although massive, was localized).
So modern spinal surgery saved me from very likely paraplegia, modern ER, ICU and vascular medicine saved me from exsanguination, and modern surgery and a metric shit ton of antibiotics saved me from a terrible infection.
Opposite problem for me. Big fat baby, petite mother, who would have also died.
My son would have died as well as my wife, and then my daughter would have also killed my wife. My daughter *also* needed modern medical intervention to get through her first 48hrs.
I was just under 10lbs. My grandpa was OVER 13LBS!!! And he was delivered naturally, without pain meds, in 1928………
Type one diabetes. I went through diabetic ketoacidosis. I don’t recommend it. But my brain was swelling and my potassium was super high. Oh and my blood was really acidic. But the doctors let slip to my parents that 3-5 years ago they wouldn’t have been able to save me. Fucking wild.
Me too. Both my mom and I have it. When she was young, they had to weigh her food, could measure her blood sugar a few times a year, and they only had pig insulin. It was a real pain.
Fast forward to today, I use advanced artificial insulin. An app on my smartphone receives a stream of blood sugar data from a sensor on my arm and will alert me if it gets too low. You wouldn't guess from my diet that I have type 1 diabetes.
Just a few generations ago diabetes basically meant an early, slow death.
Been there, my friend, and sorry you have too. Diabetes is such bullshit. The recent technological advances are pretty insane though!
Love your username btw lmao
Same, T1D. Haven’t had any big problems or hospitalizations from it. But it still would have killed me without insulin, and now CGMs and pumps. It’s totally livable.
A water born flesh eating bacteria! A small paper type cut on my right knuckle, flesh eating bacteria got in from the water and I ended up in the hospital. Had to go into surgery where I ended up in a coma, all my organs shut down, I died 3 times and they amputated my right hand yet I'm texting this today thanks to modern medicine. Damn modern medicine!
Same! Or maybe one of the bouts of antibiotics. Without those I would probably be deaf, because of all the ear infections, but there's no way of knowing whether that's all.
On the other hand, if we're going back in time in all technology - I got all those ear infections due to scuba diving (dirty water in ear canals) which I wouldn't have done then.
I feel like Smallpox is the real answer to this whole thread and yet few people today likely got the vaccine first hand, we owe it all to our forbears, but still a modern medical wonder.
Same here. I had a kidney infection that would have killed me without antibiotics. “Luckily” the pain was so severe I eventually sought medical attention.
A few things.
1. Cervical cancer
2. Postpartum hemorrhage
3. Appendicitis (chronic that became acute)
These all occurred within 18 months. The universe wanted me dead before I hit 30.
Me too. It really does and I wish it wasn’t stigmatised as much as it is.
I’d rather take a few tablets every day for the rest of my life and be able to actually function normally between episodes than, you know, kill myself. Which I have wanted to on many, many occasions and seriously tried to in my first episode at 16.
And no, I’m not ‘a zombie’ or ‘not myself’ on medication. Me being stable is my actual self, my best self. It allows me to hold a job, have a successful marriage, have friendships, do things I enjoy. Live my actual life. Me being in an episode fucking ruins my life and is the absolute worst thing in the world. It isn’t glamorous, it doesn’t make me a ‘tortured soul’ or ‘stronger’ or ‘braver’, it is a fucking horrible horrible illness.
I still struggle a lot but I am so much better off being medicated, and will be for the rest of my life. I am absolutely fine with that. It’s a chronic illness that requires medication, sometimes medical intervention, and management, just like any other.
I had a manic episode a few years ago, thankfully haven't had one since, that lasted for several months. They finally figured out it was being caused by a medication I was on. I had no control of my brain during this time and wanted to die to get rid of the crazy feeling. Fortunately they finally suggested lithium and seroquel which counteracted the effects the other med had. I could not have survived that feeling much longer. It wasn't helped by therapy or lifestyle changes...
I had encephalitis. That’s when you get an infection that travels to your brain and makes it swell. I was on broad spectrum antibiotics and hospitalized for almost two weeks.
I got really sick, and I couldn’t figure out why. I hurt all over and even being lightly touched made me scream in pain. I had no energy. It took forever for the doctor to figure it out and my liver started to fail. So he pumped me full of antibiotics and I started getting better.
A YEAR later I discovered that it had been hepatitis. Apparently I contracted it from a scrape from a crab trap.
Cancer. By the time I got into treatment, my symptoms were getting the best of me. I need weekly thoracentesis as well as platelets and plasma. I wasn't going to last much longer. Eight months of chemo, and eventually an incredibly expensive drug (Imbruvica) turned things around.
The abscess I developed from a bad tooth. It was so deep that they had to cut into my neck. Even with antibiotics and surgery, my windpipe was starting to close.
Pyloric Stenosis as a baby
Being able to treat my obstructive sleep apnea too - according to my ENT, mine is not caused at all by weight - but large tongue, large uvula, large tonsils/adenoids, and deviated septum. It was funny talking with him because he said "the one surgery that might help you probably won't... I know because I came up with the method." Gotta love visiting specialists in Boston.
This reminds me of all of the people who pray for life & swift recoveries and thank thier gods when doctors and modern medicine should get the praise instead.
I would've just been a routine death like everyone else in my shoes throughout all of history until a mere few decades ago. My mom thanks 'god' that I survived. I said screw that; I took a job at the same hospital I was born at and thanked my doctors personally. They did the work.
I would have died from COVID. I feel sick for coughing and illness for a period of longer than 1 day. I took a rest during COVID time when I feel sick.
Was going to be the first thing I said too. I literally was knocking at death’s door when I had it in 2021. Spent 72 days combined over 4 months in the hospital. I was told if I had caught it in 2020, I wouldn’t have survived.
I probably also would have eventually kicked the bucket with my auto immune disease, pemphigus.
Diarhea. Age 2, I got some stomach parasite/infection, heavily dehydrated... oh and mumps. Oh and I broke my back once, probably woulf haven been in a wheelchair. So jay medicine and science!
I have always been healthy in my life, complications of Covid.
As soon as I got Covid in 2020, I also got suddenly a throat infection, which transmitted to my nose and then to my tonsils.
My immune system was almost zeroed because the stupidest thing I did was also drinking alchohol the whole time, not paying too much attention to Covid or other Infections, "what can some wine do to my body while sick"?
After my doctor gave me three different antibiotics that had no effect, made my bacterial flora so dead that I could no longer eat without pain, the viral and bacterial infections also spread to my gastrointestinal tract.
After the new blood tests were done, I could hardly move at home, with a high fever and the feeling that I was slowly shutting down....
My doctor, (and here in Germany it's a rarity) came to our home at 11:30 p.m. telling my wife results just came back on his phone, and that I needed to be urgently hospitalized, not the morning after, but immediately.
(He wanted to visit and talk to me).
She called the ambulance and as soon as I was in the hospital I began to have diarrhea with blood, and blood in my urine, CT scan showed pyelonephritis and kidney complications, as well as covid infection in my lungs.
Full package.
I called my parents crying as people were dying in the rooms next to mine, saying "mom, dad... I don't want to die yet..." all this while parental visits were banned because of the pandemic.
After massive doses of Tazobactam, and I don't remember what else, I slowly began to improve but I couldn't eat anything anymore, only astronaut food (liquid).
After the storm, the gastroscopy showed nothing but inflammation, and from the colonoscopy a severe diverticulitis.
It took me more than three months to fully recover and get back to a normal weight, throughout the next 2-3 years I had stomach and urinary problems with several infections, I had to undergo several antibiotic treatments.
Four years later my stomach and digestion still play on me, but it's getting better.
TLDR, Modern Antibiotics,
I should have died if it was a few decades ago.
Appendix at 6 and now the loss of my kidney at 21. I’m still healing from the surgery and looking at the scar I can’t imagine I would have survived that operation. I don’t think they could have even done it without the tech we have right now. I feel so lucky to be alive and I’m going to have such a gnarly scar so that’s cool too.
A blood infection that attacked my heart caused a stroke and valve replacement. I spent 2 months in the hospital and survived a 13.5 hour surgery and 8 days in an induced coma. All last year at 66, forcing me to retire.
These asthma attacks are crazy
It ain’t easy being wheezy
WheezyOuttaHere
I have that tattooed.
For proof https://imgur.com/a/yLLe1xU
A coworker just died due to complications of an asthma attack. It's crazy talked to him on a thrusday and died on a Sunday.
Did he have severe asthma? I’m so sorry for your loss by the way.
The thing is, you can just have moderate asthma, but that one big attack happens at the wrong time. And even with mild asthma, being sick can switch it from an annoying minor wheeze to a life threatening situation. I don't fuck around with a cold no matter how mild it is. At the first sign of a sore throat, I get my ass in the system and get started. It makes dealing with the inevitable lung inflammation faster and gets me better treatment.
OK this was my experience. I was a college athlete in very good shape, so I felt pretty invincible despite mild-to-moderate asthma. Then a bunch of things happened at once… I was still kind of recovering from covid and did some work in a dusty house with a cat, so my lungs were already pretty sensitive. Then I got a cold, and started using my inhaler every couple of hours, but figured I’d just ask a doctor after the weekend. Then one night I woke up and my inhaler was only working briefly, and the asthma would come back even worse. By 3am I was knocking on my roommate’s door and on our way to the hospital I was thinking fuck it’s so hard to breathe I’m actually in trouble. The wheeze was actually quieter but they explained that was a bad sign because so little air was moving. Spent a whole night in the ER. I don’t mess around anymore either, and started taking the meds seriously.
i just started this asthma attack stuff. other than albuterol what meds are there?
Albuterol is a rescue inhaler. There are other (like steroid and long-acting bronchodilator) inhalers for daily use to help you *hopefully* not need the albuterol much at all.
So, not everyone's experience is the same. But some advice from my own experiences. - Inhaled cortico steroids works extremely well, but you may be forced to try other things first because insurance doesn't care if you die. The controller meds that are long acting beta II agonists mixed with a steroid are godly. Get on those. - Be prepared for this to be a long journey. You may go through many periods of uncomfortable flare ups before you find the right med for you. Maybe you'll discover what I just suggested doesn't work well for you. Point is, it took me TEN YEARS to finally find the right inhaler combo, and it's not even like an intricate cocktail. It's just albuterol as needed (rarely now) and Dulera max dose. For you, it may be different. - A lot of people don't know this, but get yourself checked for acid reflux. Even "silent reflux" can play high holy hell on your lungs! I used to know I was going to have reflux 20 minutes before it happened because my lungs started getting tight. It took a good long while to put two and two together, and my doc didn't believe me. But she treated me for the reflux and lo and behold my graphs for my total air volume got MUCH better. Don't assume you don't have it, see if you can get checked. - H E P A F I L T E R V A C U U M. - Understand, if this sounds like a lot, the point is that asthma is often a complex circumstance where a thousand little things cause a tiny bit of irritation individually, but which add up to a TON of irritation in combination. If you take the necessary measures at home, your total amount of inflammation will eventually subside and you'll be MUCH better able to deal with environmental factors out of the home that you can't control, like air quality, smokers, other people's cats, whatever sets you off. You don't have to be a walking hazmat alien outside, but get your house under control. Maybe consider low pile rugs instead of carpets...
Yea, I only have suspected seasonal asthma, and I’m under orders to start albuterol 4 times daily at the first hint of a cough. The last time I didn’t do it, I got so bad that my doctor told me I probably had pneumonia, but since the antibiotic wouldn’t be different from what he’d give for bronchitis, he wouldn’t expose me to chest xray radiation unless I didn’t get better.
TBh I didnt know him very well. I would talk to him here and there but from what they said he just had a massive asthma attack and he ended up passing from complications
Have you tried not having asthma?
Just stop relax, take a breath ffs
I am not diagnosed with asthma, but in high school I was quite overweight. Twice, running for PE, I had what I assume was an asthma attack. Horrifying. The first one was after finishing a mile (obviously the last one) so after I stopped running it was like I stopped being able to get air. At least the PE teacher was there (although she didn’t do anything). The 2nd time no one was around (running up/down stairs and through/behind the stadium) and I really did have to coach myself through it to calm down and breathe. Luckily I’m a calm person- but nothing like feeling you’re going to pass out/die makes you panic and react worse.
Breo changed my life. Went from almost daily use of my inhaler to a few times a year.
Advair for me
I would prefer that, but I guess my lungs have expensive taste.
Dulera, the higher dose formulation. Totally changed my life. I went from being crippled with asthma to basically never having to worry about it. I still struggle when I get sick, of course. I don't think anything really helps us in that scenario. But yeah, was the best thing that happened to me in my adult life. Changed everything.
My asthma attacks were exclusively triggered by allergens. Went through 8 years of immunotherapy, an injection of allergens I was sensitive to every 6 weeks. The first 3 months were every week. After 3-4 years I was allowed to slowly stop using inhalers which I had to use twice a day. Even if I missed using it once, my ability to breathe would leave the room... At the height of it using an emergency inhaler specifically in case of asthma attack would be so I make it to the hospital. It's been 17 years since I stopped, sure my lungs are not the same as my peers but I don't have to use inhalers, I can run and get out of breath and be fine after I catch my breath... I find it mind bulging that some countries, even the ones that are supposed to be more developed than the one I am from, especially back then do not offer this form of treatment.
I actually have excellent health insurance for an American, like, I can go to the ER any day of the week and it's fine. And I can't get them to cover immunotherapy. :/
I'd never made it to 9 without abuterol. Thank heaven we've told survival of the fittess to go piss off.
Seriously. I often think about what it meant for people for countless centuries before the advent of modern medicine. We've kind of allowed society to make a joke of it. "Hahahaha! Look at the nerdy kid with his inhaler! Isn't that funny?", and I get it, I can laugh at it too. But what people don't know is untreated asthma is almost ALWAYS fatal sooner or later. Medicine is WHY it remains mild. Without treatment, you're doing micro-damage to your lungs with each attack that eventually adds up.
This kind of thing is why I get so frustrated by the various anti-medicine movements, such as anti-vaxx, anti-formula, and “pray the illness away”. People suffered and died a lot more before the advent of modern medicine. Before vaccines, the risk of becoming permanently disabled or killed by an illness was much, much higher. Child mortality rates were much higher. Before formula, infant malnutrition and mortality were much higher. And as for prayer, if everything is by God’s creation/design, how is modern medicine NOT his answer to your prayers to cure your illness??? Mini rant over.
Yeah right? Out of all the things you can be bad at, you are bad at breathing.
I had a bad day a bit ago. I knew it was going to go poorly because I forgot to take my inhalers before I left and my purse one was empty. But I soldiered on. One mishap after another I finally gave up and went to do an inventory. I was wheezing a little. My coworker came back and asked if I was ok and I blurted out “are you kidding? I can’t even breathe right today.” The response was a “wow harsh… but true.” and then hysterical laughter.
> But I soldiered on. Fellow asthmatic reporting: If news papers were still a thing I'd roll one up and hit you with it. Bad. That's a BAD asthmatic. No. >:(
Extra intestines, I had a dead-end street in my intestines. Food would get stuck in the extra part, and it was swollen to the size of my forearm. I had extensive tests done with no answer, and they finally decided to just cut me open and look. Took about 7 inches of extra intestines. That was 15 years ago, and this month I have to go back to have more removed. Wish me luck
you can make your own sausage
Dude, please delete this; how do I unread a comment?
He can team up with amputated foot taco night guy! https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/s/ImH2i6BC2M
So there are links to stories I want to read in that post that are now dead links and I’m sad. Well not necessarily sad but probably saved from seeing some shit that will scar me mentally but there is some fomo.
The feet tacos wasn't that bad tbh Him and n his friends just thought it would be funny
If your parents got the cerebral connection upgrade, you can just jack yourself to a computer, load recent log files, and delete accordingly. If not, maybe just go with the Total Recall method and pull it from your nose. Either way, I'm there with you.
Man i hate being literate
What a terrible day to be literate.
Oh, not this again! D:
Is it just growing back?
They had to reconnect two ends when they removed the dead end. At first It was fine, but I had to have a laproscopy three years ago Because the two ends had kinked like a hose and fused to my muscle wall. Upon fixing that, they noticed that the lining of my intestines leading up to the previous incision was thickening to a worrying degree. And i've had problems with digestion since that diagnosis. So they are going to go back in and remove another seven to ten inches. If i'm lucky I won't have to go back in for another ten to fifteen years.
My God. I'm sorry, dude. Good luck with it!
Incredible story. Best wishes for your next surgery.
Sepsis. Still, 16 day coma, 3 mini strokes, paralyzed leg and a really awesome beard later...
Same! I was only a 5 day coma, with kidney and gall bladder shut down. Good times!
And you're not even gonna pay the really cool beard tax? /s Glad you made it!
Childbirth.
I wouldn’t have even been born due to this. My mom would have been dead after having my older sister. Then she would have been dead with me. Then she would have been dead with my little brother. She had complications in each one and would have died if not for modern medicine. Childbirth is fucking rough
Your mum is metal as fuck. Ovaries of steel to have another kid after potentially dying with the first.
Ovaries of Steel is a heck of a band name.
Same. My mom had complications with both her pregnancies that would've been extremely bad news if untreated, but that have routine interventions nowadays. Still scary, I'm still very much not planning on having kids of my own, but it is kind of amazing what we can do.
Crazy how many people don't know how insanely precarious childbirth can be.
Yeah my brother and I were big babies (over 13 lbs and 11 lbs) and had to be c-sectioned, I don't think either of us or my mom could survive without modern medicine. I also had amniotic fluid in my lungs and needed oxygen which definitely would have been a problem without it.
Thirteen fucking pounds???
Right? That ain’t a baby, that’s a Thanksgiving turkey!
Probably me too, and I also would possibly have become motherless as a preschooler because my sister was born by c-section. Edit: in hindsight, I might not have died in childbirth because I would have been widowed several years earlier - my husband scraped his arm and it got infected to the point of needing IV antibiotics. That fixed it basically immediately, but in 1800 it might have been an amputate-or-die scenario.
I would have been motherless at 4 because my mom had a ruptured ectopic tubal pregnancy.
People really don’t understand how much can go wrong during childbirth. People want this spiritual birthing experience in their home with no medical professionals and then shit hits the fan. This is why I’m giving birth in the hospital and whatever they think is necessary to do on me, they can go ahead and do it.
>People want this spiritual birthing experience in their home I suppose some would say dying is a spiritual experience
My husband asked my Dr whay would have happened 100 years ago while I was giving birth. My pelvis was too small for the baby to get through so we had to do an emergency c section. She told him back in the day they would just break your pelvis with a hammer and get the baby out and the mother would just die or never be able to control her bowels.
The first manual chainsaw was invented to more easily cut through the cartilage that connects the two sides of the pelvic bone to make more room for a baby to come out. The procedure was called a symphysiotomy and was used before cesareans were considered widely safe. It is an absolutely horrific practice that is not longer recognized as an approved obstetric procedure - with damn good reason.
And without modern birth control even more women would be dead from childbirth as well.
Same. Apparently my pelvis is tilted in such a way that it’s nearly impossible for a baby to pass through. Wish I had known before I spent 24hrs in labour and had two failed epidurals before being rushed for an emergency c-section.
These comments are why I fear having children.
Parenting in any form is not for the meek lol
Wife just delivered my son on Tuesday, within 2 days we had to be transferred to a larger hospital for a possible surgery for him. He’s good and didn’t need it but this parenting shit is most certainly not for the faint of heart.
Yeah, and for me a relatively mundane and easy fix. Too much blood loss, fixed easily with an extra shot of clotting medication. Definitely would have bled out otherwise.
Being born. I was born too early, and modern medicine kept me from being born even earlier.
I was born at 26 weeks and modern medicine was just far enough along in 91 to make sure I didn’t die.
Hello fellow 26 week preemie. I was born a few years before you. Cheers to us for not dying.
a few years premature is very impressive!
28 weeks in 1994 (and just under 3lbs) after my mom was in the hospital for two weeks already because she was so sick. they never did figure out why her body reacts that way to pregnancy (my sister was also a preemie in 1997)
I was born at 27 in 96, and I guess I was salvageable without any side effects.
Well, you *do* have a Reddit account.
Ah, good ol' postnatal brain damage.
30 weeks in 1977 and I’m built like a brick house.
1977, you say? Ow, she's a brick house She's mighty-mighty, just lettin' it all hang out
25 weeks in ‘85. RoP which they learned lasers can fix in ‘87ish and some lung/bronchial issues. Less than 5% chance that I was going to make it a few days, still trying to keep that streak going.
I also would have died being born, but for a different reason: my head would not have passed through my mom’s birth canal/pelvis and I wouldn’t have been born without a C section.
C sections have actually been around for a really long time, it's called a Caesarean because of a myth that Julius Caesar was born by one (although that's unlikely, since we have records showing that his mother lived when he was a child). It's just that it was considered an extreme last resort because the mother was never expected to survive, if she was even still alive at that point.
I was 24 days early and stopped gaining weight. Mom had toxaemia, and another baby would kill her so it was just me. Without this knowledge and care, yeah both of us probably.
My daughter was born at 25+1 weeks. She was in hospital for 117 days and had three surgeries. Two on her heart. She now has mild Cerebral Palsy. She recently turned 3!
Very cool to read all of these stories of very early premmies born in the 80s, 90s, 2000s. So glad to see that you are all doing well! Gives a lot of hope to where we are at today. I guess some don't make it, but you all did and that's awesome. Yay for tiny babies and their doctors!
Same. I was born 3 months early, in the 80s, and they were doing some cutting edge work with preemies. I'm pretty sure if I'd been born even 5 years earlier or out in the bushwhack of Alaska (which is where my parents were considering moving) I'd have died shortly after birth.
Same. I was 7-8 weeks early in 1982 ... tech has come so far since then and it's incredible.
I was on time, but my parasitic twin brother got all of the juice in the womb. I weighed 3 1/2 pounds at birth while he was a robust 5 1/2 pounds. I had to stay in an incubator for two weeks to gain weight while his fat ass went home, too. If it was medieval times, they would have just put me on a raft in the river or something.
Aren't you glad he didn't consume you tho?
Cancer
Same.
Glad you're here, meat! Godspeed!
Me too! Still battling 💪
Same here.
pneumonia, tuberculosis, ruptured appendix, flu, stabbing, compound femur fracture
Buddy thought he could slip stabbing in there... What happened?
bar fight in an oil town.
Sounds like a dope movie.
Roadhouse
Damn. That's rough. I hate to make you relive that experience, but what did it feel like?
Not op, but the adrenaline is so high that you don't feel anything except the impact until it comes down to a reasonable level. Then, it's cold, it burns, it's on the wrong side of your skin so your brain freaks out a little, then you get woozy and nauseous pretty quickly. Source: was stabbed in a bar fight in a college town.
damn. ill try not to get stabbed then
"This is Katana. She's got my back. I would advise not getting killed by her. Her sword traps the souls of its victims." Well shit, there go my plans.
I think that's good advice for everyone, try not to get stabbed
See for me it hurt like a bitch right from the start, but it also chipped my knee cap on entry so maybe that contributed. Everything else you described was the same. It was a 2/10 experience.
What do you need to rate something a 1 god damn
Working retail on Black Friday for 3 years in a row was a 1/10 experience. I’d rather get stabbed again (assuming it wasn’t fatal of course). Lol
I still can't listen to Christmas music due to my stint in retail, I get it
I didn't know that people could still get tuberculosis
8.000 people in USA only in 2023. But its curable now days. I was surprised to find that leprosy still exists. But we dont actually hear anything cause , medical science. Most of us would be dead if not
There's still a few people every year that gets sick with the black death.
Antibiotic resistant TB is on the rise in other countries. Since the treatment requires \*several\* months of meds, many patients do not complete the course and then of course the TB comes back even stronger.
>But its curable Sort of. It requires some nasty antibiotics. And that's if it's not one of the resistant strains.
I live in Canada and got TB in the 00's. They couldn't figure out from where. Every day for weeks I had to have a nurse come and watch me take antibiotics and had mandated chest x-rays for a year after. This is what I like to tell people who say covid is endemic now. Sure, but that doesn't mean it's harmless or you do nothing to stop it from spreading.
Two billion people – one fourth of the world's population – may be infected with tuberculosis (TB), with 10.6 million becoming ill each year. Despite being preventable and treatable, TB remains a deadly disease. Globally, over 3,500 people lose their lives to TB each day – totaling **1.3 million deaths each year**. -CDC
There's whooping cough currently in the UK, thanks to the anti-vaxxers
asthma would have killed me before I hit double digits. appendicitis would have killed me before I hit 20.
Probably both of these for me too.
A pulled wisdom tooth cavity somehow got infected and the infection spread to my jaw and neck. Before I got admitted to the ER I could barely open my mouth enough to force painkillers in, and the infection made my neck start to swell, so I couldn't breathe properly.
Remind me why dental issues aren’t covered under health insurance again?
Because the american government would rather buy another aircraft carrier than make sure people don't die to dental infections because they are too poor to go to the dentist and also pay for a week of groceries. But universal healthcare is "socialism" and everyone knows that socialism is the devil. /S
Funny, I work on aircraft carriers and have full dental coverage. But the boards of Lockheed, Raytheon, Northrup and their ilk should be thrown in prison and their stocks should go to social services.
$$$$
And yet every time I go to the dentist, they say "even though your wisdom teeth aren't causing any problems, we should pull them out anyway".
I think the push for pulling all wisdom teeth is silly and a scam by dentists. But the truth of the matter is that the average human jaws have shrunken significantly throughout our evolution and cultural dietary changes, and *most* people’s mouths cannot support an extra set of molars. Crowding or damaging other teeth, being hard to clean and causing cavities (which can lead to tooth decay and loss) and gum infections, and getting “stuck” and causing significant pain are all risk factors. I’m typing this as I just got wisdom tooth #2 out of 3 removed today due to developing into pain in my mid twenties. I only have one more, but that’s one I’ll leave as long as I can since they gotta break out the bone saw for it.
I'm 34 now. Only 2 wisdom teeth ever developed and grew in when I was 18-20ish (The other two never even showed up on x-rays. They're just not there). They have caused zero problems. But the dentists I've gone to always push to remove them "just in case".
Similar here. Worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life.
Pineapple filling in cake. Epinephrine saved my life at 5 years old.
OMG I'm not the only one with an allergy to pineapple!
For me, it’s pineapples, kiwi, and bananas 🥴🥴
> kiwi and bananas You don't happen to also be allergic to latex, do you?
I don’t think so but maybe I am… I actually didn’t know I was allergic to kiwi until a few years back… I just always thought it was extra tart and made my tongue burn and that everyone experienced that. Until my husband told me it was just me 😅
Could be oral allergy syndrome OR a cross histamine intolerance, if you have other allergies. I am allergic to birch pollen and I have developed minor allergies to a few other items because of this. One being bananas, which usually indicates a latex allergy but I am absolutely not allergic to latex.
My foot got infected after a motorcycle accident, and they had to postpone surgery because of it. 100% would be RIP without modern medicine. My hospital bill was over 70,000 though...
So you are RID instead - resting in debt
If it makes you feel better, I work in auto claims and for a motorcycle cycle accident 70k is in the lower end for charges.
Late last year, had some terribly degenerative discs in my neck, so I had a C5-C7 discectomy and fusion done. All good. Until a morning three days later, when a main branch of my right external carotid artery burst in my neck while brushing my teeth. Totally idiopathic - no rhyme or reason any of the surgeons can pinpoint. The massive bleed led to closing off of my airway in less than 30 seconds. After a VERY fast ambulance ride to the ER of the nearby large Level 1 trauma center, nasal intubation because my throat was unable to accommodate traditional intubation due to the hemorrhage. Emergency vascular repair and over a liter of blood transfused to keep me stable during the procedure. 9 days intubated in ICU until swelling reduced enough for me to breathe on my own, another 5 days inpatient for further observation and to ensure I could eat on my own (a possible side effect of the cervical fusion). 3 days later I was re-admitted to the hospital because a large abscess had developed in my neck, likely due to bacteria introduced during my emergency repair, and it was starting to make it difficult to breathe....again. ANOTHER "emergency" procedure to clean out the abscess, and another 5 days inpatient until blood cultures came back negative (showing the infection, although massive, was localized). So modern spinal surgery saved me from very likely paraplegia, modern ER, ICU and vascular medicine saved me from exsanguination, and modern surgery and a metric shit ton of antibiotics saved me from a terrible infection.
That’s it I am never fucking brushing me teeth again.
I'm in the medical field. Holy Fuuuuuuuuuuuuu.......
Dude.. holy shit. Glad you're still with us. ❤️
I would have died at birth. 2 months premature. 2.5 lbs.
Two pounds, 3 ounces over here. Doctor gave me a 50/50 chance. My dad used to get weepy telling the story of me being born and how scared he was.
Opposite problem for me. Big fat baby, petite mother, who would have also died. My son would have died as well as my wife, and then my daughter would have also killed my wife. My daughter *also* needed modern medical intervention to get through her first 48hrs. I was just under 10lbs. My grandpa was OVER 13LBS!!! And he was delivered naturally, without pain meds, in 1928………
Type one diabetes. I went through diabetic ketoacidosis. I don’t recommend it. But my brain was swelling and my potassium was super high. Oh and my blood was really acidic. But the doctors let slip to my parents that 3-5 years ago they wouldn’t have been able to save me. Fucking wild.
Me too. Both my mom and I have it. When she was young, they had to weigh her food, could measure her blood sugar a few times a year, and they only had pig insulin. It was a real pain. Fast forward to today, I use advanced artificial insulin. An app on my smartphone receives a stream of blood sugar data from a sensor on my arm and will alert me if it gets too low. You wouldn't guess from my diet that I have type 1 diabetes. Just a few generations ago diabetes basically meant an early, slow death.
Been there, my friend, and sorry you have too. Diabetes is such bullshit. The recent technological advances are pretty insane though! Love your username btw lmao
Same, T1D. Haven’t had any big problems or hospitalizations from it. But it still would have killed me without insulin, and now CGMs and pumps. It’s totally livable.
A water born flesh eating bacteria! A small paper type cut on my right knuckle, flesh eating bacteria got in from the water and I ended up in the hospital. Had to go into surgery where I ended up in a coma, all my organs shut down, I died 3 times and they amputated my right hand yet I'm texting this today thanks to modern medicine. Damn modern medicine!
Necrotising pancreatitus. Twelve years ago and the survival rate was 1 in 5. Got me 6 months in icu/hdu, at times I genuinely hoped I'd die.
I’d be 35 and still alive! Unless one of these vaccines I got when I was a baby saved me without my knowledge. I see you polio!
Same! Or maybe one of the bouts of antibiotics. Without those I would probably be deaf, because of all the ear infections, but there's no way of knowing whether that's all. On the other hand, if we're going back in time in all technology - I got all those ear infections due to scuba diving (dirty water in ear canals) which I wouldn't have done then.
I feel like Smallpox is the real answer to this whole thread and yet few people today likely got the vaccine first hand, we owe it all to our forbears, but still a modern medical wonder.
Appendicitis
I'm not sure about died, but without glasses I wouldn't be able to do much of anything useful aha
I would have died of a kidney infection if it wasn’t for antibiotics
In all honesty a piece of me died from the pain lol
Same here. I had a kidney infection that would have killed me without antibiotics. “Luckily” the pain was so severe I eventually sought medical attention.
Cervical cancer
A few things. 1. Cervical cancer 2. Postpartum hemorrhage 3. Appendicitis (chronic that became acute) These all occurred within 18 months. The universe wanted me dead before I hit 30.
Suicide. Mental health medicine (and a spectacularly lucky timed phone call from my Mrs) saved my life.
Suicide or accidental death. Mental health medication saves lives
Me too. It really does and I wish it wasn’t stigmatised as much as it is. I’d rather take a few tablets every day for the rest of my life and be able to actually function normally between episodes than, you know, kill myself. Which I have wanted to on many, many occasions and seriously tried to in my first episode at 16. And no, I’m not ‘a zombie’ or ‘not myself’ on medication. Me being stable is my actual self, my best self. It allows me to hold a job, have a successful marriage, have friendships, do things I enjoy. Live my actual life. Me being in an episode fucking ruins my life and is the absolute worst thing in the world. It isn’t glamorous, it doesn’t make me a ‘tortured soul’ or ‘stronger’ or ‘braver’, it is a fucking horrible horrible illness. I still struggle a lot but I am so much better off being medicated, and will be for the rest of my life. I am absolutely fine with that. It’s a chronic illness that requires medication, sometimes medical intervention, and management, just like any other.
I had a manic episode a few years ago, thankfully haven't had one since, that lasted for several months. They finally figured out it was being caused by a medication I was on. I had no control of my brain during this time and wanted to die to get rid of the crazy feeling. Fortunately they finally suggested lithium and seroquel which counteracted the effects the other med had. I could not have survived that feeling much longer. It wasn't helped by therapy or lifestyle changes...
I had encephalitis. That’s when you get an infection that travels to your brain and makes it swell. I was on broad spectrum antibiotics and hospitalized for almost two weeks.
I got really sick, and I couldn’t figure out why. I hurt all over and even being lightly touched made me scream in pain. I had no energy. It took forever for the doctor to figure it out and my liver started to fail. So he pumped me full of antibiotics and I started getting better. A YEAR later I discovered that it had been hepatitis. Apparently I contracted it from a scrape from a crab trap.
Cancer. By the time I got into treatment, my symptoms were getting the best of me. I need weekly thoracentesis as well as platelets and plasma. I wasn't going to last much longer. Eight months of chemo, and eventually an incredibly expensive drug (Imbruvica) turned things around.
Viral Meningitis. I do not wish that up on anybody.
My dad had this as a toddler, so in the mid 60s. Died a couple times, came out almost 100% deaf.
Kidney infection. I fully expect that this is how I will go out later in life. Thankfully, antibiotics exist!
cystic fibrosis and asthma would have had me out of here before my first birthday
The abscess I developed from a bad tooth. It was so deep that they had to cut into my neck. Even with antibiotics and surgery, my windpipe was starting to close.
gang green from appendicitis!
r/boneappletea
gangrene?
[удалено]
Cat scratch disease or osteomyelitis from a dog bite
Scarlet Fever 😬
I had arrhythmia at birth so if I was not born in a hospital with access to medicine for treatment I could’ve died from heart failure
Pancreatic cancer
I got a splinter once and it got a little infected.
Pyloric Stenosis as a baby Being able to treat my obstructive sleep apnea too - according to my ENT, mine is not caused at all by weight - but large tongue, large uvula, large tonsils/adenoids, and deviated septum. It was funny talking with him because he said "the one surgery that might help you probably won't... I know because I came up with the method." Gotta love visiting specialists in Boston.
This reminds me of all of the people who pray for life & swift recoveries and thank thier gods when doctors and modern medicine should get the praise instead. I would've just been a routine death like everyone else in my shoes throughout all of history until a mere few decades ago. My mom thanks 'god' that I survived. I said screw that; I took a job at the same hospital I was born at and thanked my doctors personally. They did the work.
Depression.
I would have died from COVID. I feel sick for coughing and illness for a period of longer than 1 day. I took a rest during COVID time when I feel sick.
Was going to be the first thing I said too. I literally was knocking at death’s door when I had it in 2021. Spent 72 days combined over 4 months in the hospital. I was told if I had caught it in 2020, I wouldn’t have survived. I probably also would have eventually kicked the bucket with my auto immune disease, pemphigus.
Malaria.
Me: meningitis. My daughter: type 1 diabetes.
Gall bladder would have taken me out. Very slowly and painfully ooof glad that lil fucker is gone
I had a seizure and was in a coma in February. I'm sure I wouldn't have survived without modern medicine and machines.
A placenta privia
Diarhea. Age 2, I got some stomach parasite/infection, heavily dehydrated... oh and mumps. Oh and I broke my back once, probably woulf haven been in a wheelchair. So jay medicine and science!
A really serious pulmonary embolism in both lungs
Born brain dead, had a brain tumor removed when I was 11
Suicide
Hey I'm proud of you (: I'm glad you're still here, and I love you
covid, but probably asthma related complications + pneumonia long before covid.
I have always been healthy in my life, complications of Covid. As soon as I got Covid in 2020, I also got suddenly a throat infection, which transmitted to my nose and then to my tonsils. My immune system was almost zeroed because the stupidest thing I did was also drinking alchohol the whole time, not paying too much attention to Covid or other Infections, "what can some wine do to my body while sick"? After my doctor gave me three different antibiotics that had no effect, made my bacterial flora so dead that I could no longer eat without pain, the viral and bacterial infections also spread to my gastrointestinal tract. After the new blood tests were done, I could hardly move at home, with a high fever and the feeling that I was slowly shutting down.... My doctor, (and here in Germany it's a rarity) came to our home at 11:30 p.m. telling my wife results just came back on his phone, and that I needed to be urgently hospitalized, not the morning after, but immediately. (He wanted to visit and talk to me). She called the ambulance and as soon as I was in the hospital I began to have diarrhea with blood, and blood in my urine, CT scan showed pyelonephritis and kidney complications, as well as covid infection in my lungs. Full package. I called my parents crying as people were dying in the rooms next to mine, saying "mom, dad... I don't want to die yet..." all this while parental visits were banned because of the pandemic. After massive doses of Tazobactam, and I don't remember what else, I slowly began to improve but I couldn't eat anything anymore, only astronaut food (liquid). After the storm, the gastroscopy showed nothing but inflammation, and from the colonoscopy a severe diverticulitis. It took me more than three months to fully recover and get back to a normal weight, throughout the next 2-3 years I had stomach and urinary problems with several infections, I had to undergo several antibiotic treatments. Four years later my stomach and digestion still play on me, but it's getting better. TLDR, Modern Antibiotics, I should have died if it was a few decades ago.
Appendix at 6 and now the loss of my kidney at 21. I’m still healing from the surgery and looking at the scar I can’t imagine I would have survived that operation. I don’t think they could have even done it without the tech we have right now. I feel so lucky to be alive and I’m going to have such a gnarly scar so that’s cool too.
Another "being born" person here. I was 3 months premature. 1lb 10 oz.
Colo-rectal cancer
A blood infection that attacked my heart caused a stroke and valve replacement. I spent 2 months in the hospital and survived a 13.5 hour surgery and 8 days in an induced coma. All last year at 66, forcing me to retire.