Live Long And Prosper

Dear Byron,

We have been so sad these days to see you get sick for the first times. You came home from the baby-sitting service your Mommy and Daddy use with a bad cold and a slight fever. You were not a happy camper that day. This past week they sent you home with pink eye, an infectious disease that caused your eye to turn all red. It hurt bad too. You had to go see the doctor to get some anti-biotic medicine for those bad bugs that wanted to live in your eye. It went away—for a while. Then, just when they thought it was gone for good, whoops, it came back again. Your crying made us almost want to cry. Yesterday, when you stayed home with Daddy, Gma and me, you had some long naps. Those, together with the medicine, seem to have you feeling much better today.

I got sick when I was a little kid. One time I had pink eye too. They made me stay home from grade school until it went away. I don't think they had any medicine for it back in the 1930s. All I know is that it hurt and I was supposed to stay out of bright light. Eventually it did go away.

My folks were scared us kids would catch diptheria. We heard of kids getting really sick with that stuff.  You'd get fever and chills, a sore throat and headache, have a hard time breathing and a really stinky guck came out of your nose. I think there were other complications. Now kids like you won't get it because you're vaccinated for it.

What really, really scared my parents was polio. That was a disease that turned kids into cripples. My Uncle Gilbert had it when he was a kid and walked with a very, very bad limp all the rest of his days. The disease was passed on by people breathing. I especially remember we didn't get to go to the Minnesota State Fair because of the polio scare. Fortunately, hardly anybody gets polio any more, because Dr. Jonas Salk and his team developed a vaccine for polio in the 1950s. That was followed by another even better vaccine by Dr. Albert Sabin in the 1960s.

There were lots of other diseases that people got. Some in our community died from pneumonia, because nobody had good medicines to fight it. In fact, Byron, it wasn't until the end of the 19th century that doctors and scientists realized that there are lots and lots of tiny bad bugs everywhere that want to take up housekeeping in our bodies. I found a little booklet by Dr. Isaac Azimov that tells all about how we discovered germs. We call them bacteria and viruses now.

There were lots and lots of diseases that seemed ready to getcha when I was a kid, besides the ones I've mentioned so far. There was measles, mumps, smallpox, chickenpox, whooping cough and scarlet fever. Way back in 1900 I read that over 60% of American kids died from diseases like these that were passed on from one person to the next. In those days 165 of every 1,000 kids died before their first birthday. In some cities this number was as high as 300. Overall, the average person only lived to about 50 years.

But modern medicine has made some remarkable progress. Here's a list of major diseases conquered during my lifetime.

1. Chicken Pox
2. Diptheria
3. Influenza or Hib disease
4. Malaria
5. Measles
6. Pertussis or whooping cough
7. Pneumococcal disease—various types of pneumonia
8. Polio
9. Tetanus
10. Typhoid fever
11. Small Pox
12. Yellow fever

All I want to say, my dear Great-Grandson, is that you are very blessed to be born in the 21st century with all the progress that has been made to fight sickness and disease. Some are saying that you could live to be over 120 years. We do pray that you have a long, happy and prosperous life and that all through your life your remember that you are a beloved child of our Father in heaven. 

We love ya, 

GGPa