The Callum thread

[BradC]

It guts me just writing this. <snip> people say they're so brave, but they had no choice.

Precisely. You/we don't/didn't have a choice and I'm really happy you felt you could let me in on that one.

You do what you do because it's your kid and you'd trade places with them in an instant but because you can't you just do whatever the doctors tell you to do no matter how much you've had to drink the in the room the night before and how hung over you are. Oh, me? Whoops.

Of course I've never experienced it from the other end, but watching my son and my dad go through it there was never any choice and he just put up with it. The docs used to say "Just enough chemo to kill the cancer and not enough to kill the patient. It's a fine line". I was nervous when pre-diagnosis he had a PICC line installed. He'd just turned three and I was terrified he was going to just wake up and pull it out. Instead I caught him under the covers talking to it. He'd named it and was quite comfortable with this thing hanging out of his arm that wasn't there when he put the mask on that "smelled of dinosaur feet" and went to sleep.

Sorry.. rambling.

Hell no. When we were in the middle of it, one of my boozy work mates pulled me aside to tell me he went through it in his teenage years and he's still ok therefore he was sure Callum would be ok. I loved the positivity.

Also, clearly I don't mind talking about it. It helps me, and frankly if it helps anyone else then I've had a win. Not everyone wins, but we celebrate every one that does/did.

[BradC]

In other words, the idea that almost all children survive to start school is quite a modern idea, and is largely the result of initially the acceptance of the germ theory of disease (now being abandoned by the US government) in the late nineteenth century, and the resultant development of water and sewerage systems in cities, and education of mothers in particular about hygiene in the early twentieth century.

I do a bit of regional work, and one of the things I do in a new town is wander the cemetery. The proportion of children pre-1900 is significant. We've made major inroads with medical science. That has resulted in a society who can't/won't talk about the death of children and I don't think that denial is doing anyone any good. Certainly not those who've lost kids.

Of course 2018 I was blissfully unaware also, so it's a new reality for us, but it's a reality that people don't talk about. This is one of the reasons I started this thread.

[JDNSW]

Yes, I agree . I became aware of the really major reduction in child mortality about twenty years ago, I think it was.

A cousin of mine arranged a conducted tour of what was left of the old village of Cadia near Orange - the village was where there is now a large hole in the ground, but one of the obligations on the mining company was to document and move the cemetery. (My father's earliest memories were from there, and he started school there. My grandfather drove a wagon carting wood for the smelter at the mine.)

It was only a small cemetery, from memory only about 35 burials. Including only five adults. (from about 1890 to 1930)

Perhaps worth noting that the family moved into Orange when my father was about eight (1910), after his next younger brother died from diphtheria in his mothers arms in a borrowed sulky on the way to the hospital in Orange (where the boy was buried). My middle name Ivor is from him. When my youngest aunt died in about 1995, her brother was clearing out her house. One of the things found was a small brown paper bag with some unidentifieable lumps in it. Written on it in my grandmother's handwriting was "Ivor's Sweets". My father's family did well - they only lost one out of seven. My mother's family lost three out of eight.

[BradC]

I find it fascinating in what could possibly be considered a morbid way. We've done so well as a society, and it's one of the reasons the third world countries will breed us into obscurity. 100 years ago families had 10 kids because maybe 2 or 3 would make it. Now we import families from under-developed countries who still have 10 kids and all make it because we have vaccines, medicine, sanitation and welfare.

My grandfather was born in 1921. At the age of 9 he spent over 6 months in Fremantle hospital with a rare lung condition (can't find any records, but he bears the scars and until he turned 101 he still had all the memories). He turns 105 in August. Oddly enough, his biggest regret was that medical condition prevented him from signing up for WWII where a pile of his mates never came home. Instead he worked out at RAAF Pearce welding up holes in aircraft fuel tanks. I did some work on that building not that long ago.

My great grandmother was born in 1903 and my grandmother in 1924. Both educated at North Kalgoorlie Primary. I've done some work their also. We may not have a lot of history in WA, but I've been lucky enough to see some small parts of it.

[JDNSW]

A couple of anecdotes illustrate the changes in my lifetime.

When me and my twin were born, as is common, we were premature. The matron at the small hospital really upset my mother "You have to get these boys baptised straight away, these little ones slip away so easily!" But even by 1941 the standards of care had already improved the survival rate for premature babies compared to when the matron had done her training, and we both survived. Thirty years later, things had improved further, and my younger son (survivor of twins - his twin brother was stillborn) survived with only minor problems. The doctors told his mother that even a year earlier at that hospital he would almost certainly have not survived (humidicrib).

When I was about eleven, I got a badly infected minor injury on my wrist (the dressing is visible in that year's school photo). The doctor diagnosed cellulitis, which led to my mother almost fainting - everyone she had known with that diagnosis had died. However, in this case, I was completely recovered within a week, without missing a day's school - penicillin! (This was a real miracle drug in those days before antibiotic resistant bacteria had evolved. The infection completely disappeared in two days.)