I just got to thinking that I would be dead several times over if it weren't for modern medicine. I am going to list here the episodes that my life has been saved! And my 2 children also wouldn't have been here. I am so grateful to be living today.
1. 1970. Born at 30 weeks. Lucky to have survived, particularly 40+ years ago. Even these days 30 weeks can have complications. 2. 2000. Hypothyroid due to complete thyroid failure. I now depend on oral thyroid hormone to stay alive and well. I was very unwell at the time I was finally diagnosed. With treatment the lights came back on, and with proper med adjustment the world had color again.
3. 2008. Appendicitis surgery when 3 months pregnant with my first (baby and I probably both wouldn't have made it without emergency surgery). Also on insulin the whole pregnancy. The pregnancy probably couldn't have had such a positive outcome with out insulin.
4. 2012. Emergency cesarian (baby was seatbelted into my uterus by the umbilical cord and couldn't be delivered). Again she and I probably wouldn't have made it without surgical intervention. This pregnancy also couldn't have proceeded without successfully without insulin.
5. I don't know if I could survive long without insulin either. Definitely I would be very ill without it.
So that's 2 surgeries and 2 types of critical meds I need to be alive. Of course that also makes long term access to these medicines critical as well.
So I count every day as a priviledge and blessed. I believe I am here for a reason and do my very best to make the world I pass through a better place than it was before I was here.
Thank you for sharing this. I've felt the same way myself at two critical junctures in my life. The first in June 2010 when I was lying in the ICU in DKA - my first encounter with diabetes. Then December 2011 when my daughter arrived 6 weeks early and had to be fed through a tube. I sat in the neonatal unit holding the tube and thought, 100 years ago, she wouldn't have made it. Then thought, wait a second, 100 years ago, we wouldn't even have gotten this far because I wouldn't have made it through the DKA...
Yep, I've felt this way, too. If I was born 100 or even 50 years ago I'd be dead twice over.
I was born at 28 weeks and spent the first weeks of my life on a ventilator due to severe breathing problems, and had many other problems related to prematurity. I was in the hospital for four and a half months, and there is no way I would have survived without a NICU and all its technology.
Then at age 9 I was diagnosed with diabetes. I'm not sure if I was in DKA or not, but I was hospitalized for four days and ketones were definitely an issue as I remember them being mentioned frequently. I definitely need insulin to survive—I develop extremely high BG and large ketones within hours of interrupted insulin delivery.
I'm a preemie, 2 1/2 pounds at birth in 1953..It was called a blessing. I survived every kind of missals, whooping cough, chicken pox, rheumatic and scarlet fever, again I think it was a blessing. In 1969 my Junior year of high school I skipped school the first day to party, at 2:00 pm I was struck by a train at a RR crossing (yes it hurt really bad)...and yes I'm still here the news papers said it was a Miracle...in the sixty's they still said things like that especially in the south. After finishing high school I went into the military I'm a Vietnam veteran, I came home without any physical scratches...just a few nightmares...it was a blessing. I was diagnosed with Type 2 shortly after my 34 birthday and sent home with some pills and was told to stop eating sugar everything would be OK. The pills did nothing and soon I was extremely ill and put on insulin. Fast forward to 2012 in late February I was diagnosed with Hepatic Cellular Carcinoma, I went from having 3 doctors to 30 overnight. They ran a small tube up through a artery in my leg to the tumor and placed chemo and radioactive beads around it to slow down it's growth and I was placed on the US transplant list...and amazing medical procedure...a blessing. Three months after the procedure they ran a MRI to see if the tumor had stopped growing and it was the same size but they found another tumor. They scheduled an appointment for the fallowing Wednesday to tell me the bad news but on Tuesday (July 23) at noon a transplant coordinator called me and said Mr G we have a organ for you do you want it?... are you ready...another blessing. Two of the Doctors on my transplant teem boarded a jet aircraft flew to another city removed the organ and flew back to Dallas and a 11:00 pm they moved me to the OR and started the 8-12 hour procedure. The fallowing day around 6:00 pm they brought me out of a induced coma and my family was all standing there along with the surgeon and his teem of doctors...My wife said I told the surgeon I would pray for him every day. I'm at home now recovering from the transplant and learning how to live with another chronic condition caused buy the anti rejection drugs, and re-educating myself because my Diabetes is diffrent now and nothing I did before works post transplant because I take Prednisone every day along with some other nasty drugs and they have me on a 4500 to 5000 calorie diet.
I cannot shout loud enough, I have seen his glorious light and have felt His warmth, I praise the Lord, for he has blessed me, and my doctors again and again.
