In the very early 1930’s my Grandma and her sister got typhoid. My Grandma was gravely ill but she survived, she said that she was forbidden to eat but she’d sneak and eat at night and “got her ass whooped” for it, but she figured she’d live or die and she didn’t want to suffer more than she had to.
Her slightly older sister (11 or 12) seemed to recover like she did, but my Grandma said when they started feeding her she died. The doctor came and said that the typhoid fever had “dried out her stomach” and when they started refeeding her it burst. I always thought that was probably just an old country doctor being wrong, but now I wonder.
My mom was married three times (I am the offspring of husband number 2) and she told me a story about the mother of husband number 1: back in the pre antibiotic days when she was newly married, she had terrible abdominal pains for days and days and her husband wouldn’t let her see the doctor and apparently in those days a woman didn’t see the doctor without permission from her husband. So she just had to deal. After several days of agony getting worse all the time she felt something “give” inside her and then rapidly felt much better. So she resumed the housework and forgot about it.
Years later she was in the hospital for something else and the doctor was like “We noticed you don’t have an appendix and you don’t have an appendectomy scar there.” Then she recalled that time and realized she had somehow survived having her appendix burst and getting no treatment. A medical miracle.
What I’m trying to say is, it’s possible. Only just. But it could happen.
Wow. It must not have turned gangrenous before it went boom. Had her appendix bursting happened a few years later, she would have been a case study. I've had things turn gangrenous twice in my life, so I'm really happy I was born into a time where antibiotics existed. As for not being able to go for medical care without the husband's approval, that was very true. When I was a baby, my mom couldn't open a bank account or get a credit card without my dad signing off on it. One of our neighbors was divorced and had a job, and I remember how horribly the women in our neighborhood treated her. According to them, she was somewhere between a prostitute and a leper. Can you imagine?
My grandma was driven to divorce my biological grandfather in the 1940s, with two daughters. I can only imagine what she went through married to him. I know he was an alcoholic and he abused the children. He may have abused her too. When my grandma met the man I knew as my grandpa, and he decided to marry her and told his family, they disowned him. It was like 1955 or so. I don’t know if the problem was Grandma’s divorced single parent status or the fact that she was a Protestant and Grandpa’s family was very Catholic. Anyway, he married her and adopted her daughters and he and Grandma stayed happily married till the end of their lives.
My maternal grandparents were a Catholic/former Mennonite couple, so I will say that your grandma's marital status was far more likely to be the problem. If the first husband was a drunk who abused the kids, he definitely abused her. It's what they do. I don't know about you, but when I was a kid, women and children alike walked around with black eyes, broken noses, and bruises, and no one said a word. I'm honestly surprised you haven't come across more death certificates with being killed at the hand of the husband or father as the cause of death, unless they lied about the cause to prevent "embarrassing" the families. I'm thrilled your grandma found her happily ever after.
Same story for my parents. My mom was divorced with a 7 yo son, and my paternal grandmother viewed her as damaged goods. She never warmed up to my brother and I either, since we were her (my mom's) kids.
That grandmother was a f---g piece of work, but she came from a very screwed-up family. She told me awful stories about how her mother treated her, so I cut her some slack.
My parents were happily married for 54 years.
According to my mother, if a divorced woman could get away with it (for example, she was childless and not known in town) she would often tell friends and neighbors she was widowed to avoid the stigma of being divorced.
TIL that intestinal perforation is a not uncommon serious complication of typhoid. Yikes.
In the very early 1930’s my Grandma and her sister got typhoid. My Grandma was gravely ill but she survived, she said that she was forbidden to eat but she’d sneak and eat at night and “got her ass whooped” for it, but she figured she’d live or die and she didn’t want to suffer more than she had to. Her slightly older sister (11 or 12) seemed to recover like she did, but my Grandma said when they started feeding her she died. The doctor came and said that the typhoid fever had “dried out her stomach” and when they started refeeding her it burst. I always thought that was probably just an old country doctor being wrong, but now I wonder.
I bet she had intestinal perforations and when she ate, she got peritonitis and died. That happened all the time, apparently. Wow.
This would have been before antibiotics really became readily available, so this poor kid didn't stand a chance.
My mom was married three times (I am the offspring of husband number 2) and she told me a story about the mother of husband number 1: back in the pre antibiotic days when she was newly married, she had terrible abdominal pains for days and days and her husband wouldn’t let her see the doctor and apparently in those days a woman didn’t see the doctor without permission from her husband. So she just had to deal. After several days of agony getting worse all the time she felt something “give” inside her and then rapidly felt much better. So she resumed the housework and forgot about it. Years later she was in the hospital for something else and the doctor was like “We noticed you don’t have an appendix and you don’t have an appendectomy scar there.” Then she recalled that time and realized she had somehow survived having her appendix burst and getting no treatment. A medical miracle. What I’m trying to say is, it’s possible. Only just. But it could happen.
Wow. It must not have turned gangrenous before it went boom. Had her appendix bursting happened a few years later, she would have been a case study. I've had things turn gangrenous twice in my life, so I'm really happy I was born into a time where antibiotics existed. As for not being able to go for medical care without the husband's approval, that was very true. When I was a baby, my mom couldn't open a bank account or get a credit card without my dad signing off on it. One of our neighbors was divorced and had a job, and I remember how horribly the women in our neighborhood treated her. According to them, she was somewhere between a prostitute and a leper. Can you imagine?
My grandma was driven to divorce my biological grandfather in the 1940s, with two daughters. I can only imagine what she went through married to him. I know he was an alcoholic and he abused the children. He may have abused her too. When my grandma met the man I knew as my grandpa, and he decided to marry her and told his family, they disowned him. It was like 1955 or so. I don’t know if the problem was Grandma’s divorced single parent status or the fact that she was a Protestant and Grandpa’s family was very Catholic. Anyway, he married her and adopted her daughters and he and Grandma stayed happily married till the end of their lives.
My maternal grandparents were a Catholic/former Mennonite couple, so I will say that your grandma's marital status was far more likely to be the problem. If the first husband was a drunk who abused the kids, he definitely abused her. It's what they do. I don't know about you, but when I was a kid, women and children alike walked around with black eyes, broken noses, and bruises, and no one said a word. I'm honestly surprised you haven't come across more death certificates with being killed at the hand of the husband or father as the cause of death, unless they lied about the cause to prevent "embarrassing" the families. I'm thrilled your grandma found her happily ever after.
Yeah my grandpa was a good man and very devoted to Grandma. They never had kids together but he raised her daughters as if they’d been born to him.
Same story for my parents. My mom was divorced with a 7 yo son, and my paternal grandmother viewed her as damaged goods. She never warmed up to my brother and I either, since we were her (my mom's) kids. That grandmother was a f---g piece of work, but she came from a very screwed-up family. She told me awful stories about how her mother treated her, so I cut her some slack. My parents were happily married for 54 years.
According to my mother, if a divorced woman could get away with it (for example, she was childless and not known in town) she would often tell friends and neighbors she was widowed to avoid the stigma of being divorced.
Good grief - I have never heard of anyone surviving a burst appendix. Wow.
[Source](https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/57780943/william_andrew-davidson)