Medical Monday - Breast Cancer in the Family

Bridget Barrett nee Farley's cause of death

I don't know of anyone in my family that has had breast cancer. At least I didn't. I found the death certificate for my 2nd great grandmother, Bridget Barrett nee Farley, and on it was her cause of death..."exhaustion from cancer of breast."

According to this she was diagnosed in January 1905 and she didn't die for a year and a half. I don't know how they attempted to treat cancer in the early 20th century. I'm not sure that I really want to research that. It's pretty horrific even today when we have chemotherapy and radiation treatment and surgery. 

During that time that she had cancer she actually went to Philadelphia for eye surgery. I wish I knew what was wrong with her eye(s). Not because it's really important, but I wonder if it was really severe...whatever it was. Was it so severe that it needed to be done? Would she have been blinded without it? Or was it minor and had it done believing that she was going to beat the cancer? Was the cancer so advanced that it caused this problem with her eyes? That's why I would like to know. 

The Plain Speaker, 28APR1905, pg5

Of course I sit here comfortably in 2015 and look back at medicine in the early 1900s and cringe, but I'm sure at the time they probably felt about their medicine the same way we feel about ours. What will my descendants think of our medicine in another century? Will they look at our cancer treatments and think they're barbaric and primitive? I hope so, because if they think that at least they'll have something better.

The Plain Speaker, 09MAY1905, pg5

Walter Barrett went to visit his mother in Philadelphia after the surgery. Those things aren't really reported in newspapers today. As a researcher I'm glad that they were reported. If they hadn't been I wouldn't have known about her having this surgery. This courage that I can at least hope some of which has passed on to me and mine.

These sorts of articles make family history more personal. More than just dates and names. They give us stories.

Walter was also the informant on Bridget's death certificate. Patrick, her husband, died two years after her. I don't know why he wasn't the informant. Perhaps he was too grieved. I imagine they all were.

Excerpt from Bridget Barrett's death certificate

I've seen far too many death certificates for my ancestors that have no parental information on them. It can be frustrating...very frustrating. On Bridget's I've got her parents listed as Hugh and Alice Farley nee Fagan. While I have to take it with a grain of salt (this is second-hand information after all), I do see a pattern in the names. 

Bridget and Patrick had six children: Edward, Mary (my ancestor), William, Hugh, Walter, and Alice. According to Patrick's death certificate his parents were Edward and Mary. Bridget's parent were Hugh and Alice. Their children were named after their parents it would seem.

These were all the revelations I got from Bridget's death certificate and those two small clippings. I have no obituary for her yet. Newspapers.com hasn't added the Hazleton papers for 1906. I'm hoping that 1906 isn't one of the years permanently lost. I found out where in Saint Gabriel's cemetery she and Patrick are buried this summer and I was finally able to create FindAGrave memorials for them. I just seems like an obituary would help to close out the story.

I take this time to remember someone that must have been a strong and brave woman and I'm proud to be your granddaughter.

Medical Monday - William Reilly's Death

The Scranton Republican, 04SEP1913, pg16

Last Monday I posted about the death of Margaret Reilly nee Barrett. In that obituary her grandson, William Reilly, was mentioned. He died about a week before she did. What a horrible time for that family.

"Avoca

Young Man Claimed by the Grim Reaper

Death claimed William Reilly, aged seventeen years, son of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Reilly, of South Main street, early yesterday morning. He had been ill ten months.

Besides his parents, one sister, Margaret, survives. The funeral will be held Friday morning at 9 o'clock. A mass of requiem will be sung in St. Mary's church.

Burial will be made in St. Mary's cemetery."

The obituary doesn't quite match the death certificate exactly. It had that he was just a few months short of his seventeenth birthday, but it's not a big difference. He was still too young to be taken from his parents.

Excerpt of William Reilly's death certificate

William was born on November 4th 1896 in Avoca, Pennsylvania. He died on September 3rd 1913. Aside from some possible misspellings his cause of death was "valvular disease of heart (mitral)." You could stop there if you chose to. There was something wrong with his heart...but you have to look further and ask yourself why did this teenager die because of his heart?

The secondary/contributory cause of death is "chorea - rheumatism". That's not as in arthritis, but as in rheumatic fever.

I did a little research to confirm that it was rheumatic fever and because I hadn't heard of chorea before. The first thing I though of was cholera, but needless to say that wasn't right.

Chorea is derived from the Greek word meaning to dance, but they were used to describe the irregular, jerky movements that some developed who had acute rheumatic fever. Rheumatic fever can develop from complications from strep throat or scarlet fever. Rheumatic fever, aside from the chorea-type movements, can also lead to heart damage/valve problems and heart failure.

So it would seem that William had gotten sick months earlier (as mentioned in the obituary) and this would be the outcome. Strep? Scarlett fever? Doesn't matter much. There were no antibiotics to treat it with and eventually his heart gave out.

It reminds me of Little Women when Beth got scarlet fever. She survived but remained weak for the rest of her short life. How many people this must have happened to. How many it still happens to in areas of the world without easy access to penicillin.

Rest in peace, William. May you be remembered forever.

Medical Monday - William Barrett's Cause of Death

William Barrett's Death Certificate

William Barrett died at the age of 36 and left behind his wife, Carrie Barrett nee Bittenbender, and three little children: Marie, William Jr, and Thomas.

The first thing that came to mind when I saw "regurgitation" was that he drank too much and vomited in his sleep. I never realized that regurgitation could be associated with the heart. Vomiting was all that I thought of. The contributory cause "ordema (sic) of lungs" seems to me like it should be edema which is fluid in the lungs.

I searched ordema of lungs just in case and Google promptly guided me to edema. That doesn't make it right, but I then decided to type in "regurgitation with edema of lungs secondary cause of death" and I got a top hit of "Mitral regurgitation." Mitral certainly looks like the first word under the cause of death here. So his mitral heart valve wasn't working properly for three months causing blood to leak back into the heart thus causing it to work harder. From what I've read on pulmonary edema it seems that it can be brought on by heart problems so the connection isn't surprising. Small leaks caused by the mitral valve not working properly aren't supposed to be a problem, but larger ones are and will weaken the heart resulting in heart failure if not treated. From the website I was reading it seems that aside from monitoring a person's condition treatment involved to repair or replace the mitral valve. Just a guess, but I don't really think that was much of an option in 1915.

As I've mentioned before with these medical posts, I'm no doctor so it's difficult for me to make even an educated guess as to what happened, but it would have been nice to know what caused the heart problem to begin with. He was being treated for it for just over three months but did he have it for much longer and it was just diagnosed late? Possible, but that's terrible luck to live with something for 36 years only to die from it right after diagnosis. A heart attack, calcium build-up, and infections such as rheumatic fever could have weakened the heart and caused the problem with the mitral valve. This certainly seems more feasible and could account for the death a few months down the road. What bothers me is that no infection or previous heart issue was listed as a contributory cause of death. To me it certainly would have been, but I don't know what they knew about the heart in 1915.

I know there is little point in wondering why the mitral issues occurred. It occurred and no amount of wondering changes that. It's cases like these when someone was taken at such a young age that I want to know why. Why did it happen and force him to leave behind three children under 5 years of age? I can't change those things, but I do tend to obsess over them and my heart always goes out to the family.

William Barrett was my 2nd great uncle. He was the son of Patrick and Bridget Barrett nee Farley. He was born on June 4th 1878 and baptized in St. Gabriel's Roman Catholic Church. He was 36 when he died as confirmed by the 1880 census and his baptismal record, not 33 as the death certificate states (without a date of birth listed). Tragedy would strike again in another 10 years.

Medical Monday - Annie Bronsevitch

I suppose this post could have gone under a Wednesday's Child post, but as I've been reviewing death certificates I have posts I want to write that involve more than just children. Since many people care about the medical aspect in genealogy (is there insanity in my family? Alzheimer's? Breast cancer? Any cancer?) I decided to start a "Medical Monday" series. I'm not a medical professional, but most genealogists aren't. There is a lot of great information that can be found online when you can actually make out what the cause of death is. Often times it's illegible and the terms are dated or confusing. Doing a little research may answer some of these questions.

I was going through the Pennsylvania Death Records online (you've probably noticed a trend in many of my posts by now) and I was looking for records for my Bronsavage/Bronsevitch line. It was more painful than I expected. With a surname search for "Bronsavage" I got hits for my grandmother, Florence, my great uncle's wife, Helen, and my 1st cousin once removed, Nancy May, who died when she was about five. There was one other hit for someone I had never heard of...Julia Dagis...her mother was also Julia and her maiden name was Bronsavage. Could be a relative, but I have no connection yet. What I was looking for was my great grandparents, Anthony and Cecelia Bronsevitch (I should probably mention that Bronsavage is a variant), but didn't find them. Boy is that another post because sometimes these unusual names don't produce the easiest results.

Birth information

Anyway, I changed my search parameters, did some tweaking here and there with what information I included and what I omitted and I came across the record for an Annie Bronsevitch.

When I looked at the certificate I saw that she was definitely a Bronsevitch/Bronsavage of mine. Of course as far as I know almost any from Hazleton/West Hazleton should belong to me. Seeing her parents (my great grandparents) confirmed it. She was the daughter of Anthony and Cecelia Bronsevitch nee Kozlowski and she lived to be 7 months old.

Seeing stuff like this always makes me sad. To experience the loss of a child is not something any parent should have to experience, but we all know it happens and it is heart-breaking. My mind immediately turned to why she died.

Cause of death

When my mother and I saw the cause of death as "auto-infection or (self poisoning)" we were confused. Did the baby get into something that she shouldn't have? No doubt baby-proofing homes wasn't at the standard of today. Sometimes I'm amazed we all survived our childhoods. As I sometimes do I fixated on the "auto-infection" and stopped reading. I need to retrain my brain to quit doing this. Still, when I researched auto-infection I was rewarded with some good information:


"Autoinfection:
-An infection by disease organisms already present in the body but developing in a different body part.
-A reinfection by microbes or parasitic organisms."

That made me feel better than the child having ingested poison. As is par for the course it was then that I continued analyzing the rest of the diagnosis and saw the mention of cholera. Even though I had a definition of auto-infection that seemed satisfactory I adjusted my search and focused on cholera infantum:

"Cholera infantum
A nonspecific term meaning either:
-Summer complaint - An obsolete term for severe, prostrating gastroenteritis in infants occurring in hot weather and caused by unknown pathogens, possibly Shigella and Salmonells spp; or
-Infantile gastroenteritis."

That ties in well with the contributory causes of "Season, climate, food." I suppose this wasn't completely unheard of in the early 20th century and it's certainly something we take for granted today although it is still cause for concern in countries where sanitation is primitive.

So with this post and what was initially a surprising cause of death I remember Annie. She is buried in Ss. Peter and Paul's Lithuanian Catholic Cemetery in Hazleton, Pennsylvania along with her mother, father, and a brother.