If I Lived Before. . .

     If I lived in the time before blood transfusions, my younger brother and sister would have died in infancy of Rh blood incompatibility. If Rod somehow survived birth, in the time before hearing aids, he would not be the music lover he is today. A whole world of sounds and learning would have been shut to him, and perhaps, the door to an institution.
     If I lived in the time before Caesarians, I would have watched my sister die in labor with her first child. The same is true for my sister-in-law, who would not have survived to give birth to her third child, born with spina bifida.  If not for Caesarian birth, Zane would have died in infancy when the blister like meningocele on his lower vertebra burst in the birth canal, contaminating his spinal fluid. And if he miraculously survived that, his prospects for life would still have been as grim as Rod's.
     If I had lived before migraine interruptor meds, I would have suffered chronically from the nauseating pain fog of migraines or the medicated brainfog of painkillers. But that suffering probably would have been cut short if my Graves' disease had developed in the days before thyroid irradiation. Before radiation or meds, half of Graves sufferers died. From my own experience, I can attest it would be an unpleasant way to die.
    If my mother had lived before psychiatric drugs, as limited as they were in the sixties, she might have wound up in a nightmarish mental institution or made a perpetual nightmare of our home.   
    It is easy to long for the good old days of patriotism, morality and honor, but then--we are alive to do so.  Would I have lived to lament the losses of these times, if I had lived before?